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Tbe 

Worttte 
Congress of Religions 



"3B\> mere)? anD trutb iniquity is purgcD." 

— Iprov. 16=6. 

"EJe sball know tbe trutb anfc tbe trutb sball 
make yon free/' 

— 5obn 8=32. 



*Bk ' 



CHICAGO 
LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS 



The 
World's 
Congress 

of 
Religions 



ILLUSTRATED 



LIBRARY of CHOICE FICTION. 

Monthly. 

$6 Annually. No. 71, Feb. '94. 

Entered at Chicago P O. as 

second -class mat'er. 



CHICAGO 
LAIRD & LEE 



THE WORLDS CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 




ARCHBISHOP OF ZANTE, DIONYSIOS LATAS. 

of Greece, was borh in 1836* He studied in the Seminary of the Holv Cross under the 

patronage of the Patriarch of Jerusalem ; in the University of Athens ; in 

the-University of Strasburg, and a year each in the Universities 

of Berlin, Leipsic and Munich. 



The World's .... 
Congress of Religions 

BEING A COMPLETE AND CONCISE 

HISTORY 

OF THE MOST INSPIRING CONVOCATION OF CIVILIZA- 
TION, WHEREIN WAS GIVEN FULL EXPRESSION TO 
THE IRREFUTABLE EVIDENCE ESTABLISHING 

THE INDEPENDENCE OF MIND 

AND THE 

SUPREMACY OF HUMAN CONSCIENCE 



Y EDITED BY 

Prof. C. m! STEVANS, Ph. D. 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND REVIEW BY 

Rev. H. W. THOMAS, D.D. 

PEOPLE'S CHURCH, INDEPENDENT, CHICAGO 



"NOT THINGS BUT MEN— NOT MATTER BUT MIND** 






FEB 5 189- 

CHICAGO XI' r n 

LAIRD & LEE, PUBLISHERS 
1894 



*& 



Copyright 1894 
By Laird & Lee 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PACK 

Introduction by Rev. H. W. Thomas, D.D u 

I. First Words 31 

II. Foreign Missions Debated 60 

III. The Three Great Religions of China. . 74 

IV. The Religions of India 97 

V. Religious System of the Parsees 11 1 

VI. Janism 1 36 

VII. MOHAMETANISM I46 

VIII. SWEDENBORGIANISM 169 

IX. Judaism 178 

X. Armenians and the Greek Church 190 

XI. Unitarianism and Universalism 199 

XII. Theosophy and Christian Science 205 

XIII. Christianity and Evolution 220 

XIV. The Truthfulness of the Holy Scrip- 

tures 232 

XV. Man from a Catholic View 244 

XVI. Social Purity 256 

XVII. Idealism, the New Religion 271 

XVIII. Independent and Ethical Organizations 278 

XIX. Ultimate Religion 302 

XX. Last Words 323 



PREFACE. 

Ponderous volumes may be issued containing the 
gold of thought within the mountain of formal dis- 
course, but life is too engrossed with essential pur- 
suits for the majority of readers to delve into thou- 
sands of pages for the golden truths they want at once. 
Readers soon become well enough acquainted with 
the ultra orthodox doctrines of Christendom. The 
truths are more precious and useful which prevail in 
the experience and wisdom of all life. 

The mysteries and hopes within the world's relig- 
ions have been the absorbing inquiry of man since 
mind first thought beyond material things and the 
benefits and consequences in personal duty will re- 
main the supreme theme as long as there is any ques- 
tion in happiness or destiny. 

The greatest religious convocation of all history 
came and went like a high tide of human mind, writ- 
ing its record on the shores of time. It was an 
ecumenical council in whose sympathies were revealed 
the possession of mutua.1 truth and the presence of 
a universal hope. 

Out of all that was said, the most instructive and 
representative information, divested of all the essen- 
tial sermonizings and explanations necessarily inci- 
dent to the presentation of such stupendous subjects, 
has been carefully gathered into this book for the 
discriminating reader, so that all may profit by that 
great congress of creed, and parliament of faith. 

The Editor. 



INTRODUCTION. 
I 

The years all move one way. The generations of 
earth come and go. The future is ever becoming 
the present and the present is dropping back into 
the past. In this ceaseless flow of the ages the chil- 
dren of time coming up to great events, live through 
them; and then look back upon what has been. 

For three years the thought of our own and other 
countries looked forward to the World's Columbian 
Exposition; the millions came and looked upon its 
bewildering wonders. Then the gates were closed, 
those millions went to their many homes in all lands; 
and now the lagoons are covered with ice, the trees 
stand up in dreary nakedness, the buildings are de- 
serted ; the dreamland of beauty lives only in memory. 

It was natural and proper that in such a strange 
world of the coming and the going, there should have 
been a mind-side as well as a sense-side, or a series of 
World's Auxiliary Congresses representing the ideas 
and sentiments that made the Exposition possible; 
for at bottom, this is a thought-world, in which the 
objectivized things or facts find expression. The 
expressional part, "the show," that which could be 
looked upon, was the Exposition proper, with its vast 
architectural display and its wonderful collection of 
the useful and beautiful. The impressional, the in- 
ner, that which dealt with the unseen forces, princi- 



1 2 INTRODUCTION 

pies and powers, was the auxiliary or Congress de- 
partment, in which were represented the whole field 
of human knowledge, mechanics, industry, agricult- 
ure, business, science, philosophy, art, literature, 
government and religion. 

It was in the largest sense a world-school of all 
learning and teaching, as the other was of all doing. 
The suggestive motto of these Congresses was: "Not 
things, but Men." This was meant to accentuate the 
dignity, the worth of man, in whom things find their 
value; and hence the words were wisely chosen ; but 
as men and things are related, they should be thought 
of together, or as parts of the great whole. It takes 
the material and the spiritual, the objective and the 
subjective to make the all of man's being. 

Some idea of the vastness of these Auxiliary Con- 
gresses may be had from the report of the official 
secretary, Mr. Clarence E. Young, in which he says: 
"There were 210 working committees; a local mem- 
bership of 1,600; and a non-resident membership of 
15,000; and over a million circulars were sent out. 
There were held 1,245 sessions, with 5,974 speakers, 
and a total attendance of over 700,000. It would re- 
quire fifty volumes of six hundred pages each to con- 
tain the published proceedings, papers and addresses." 

And yet, valuable as these Congresses were, it is 
hardly too much to say, that all of them together did 
not create such a wide and deep public interest as 
was felt in the Parliament of Religions. A hundred 
years hence when the Exposition shall have been for- 
gotten, these Auxiliary Congresses will be remem- 
bered and their influence felt; and a hundred years 



INTRODUCTION 1 3 

hence, the day on which the Parliament of Religions 
was opened, will probably be celebrated as the be- 
ginning of the new era of the larger religious toler- 
ation and fraternity of mankind. 

II. 

We have approached the study of the Parliament 
of Religions by way of the Exposition and the Aux- 
iliary Congresses; not alone because it was a part of 
these, and as such was made possible, but for the 
deeper reason that the religious thought or life of man 
does not stand by itself, but moves along with and as 
a part of the larger and related world-life of labor, 
business, invention, discovery, learning, government; 
and journeying with these and as a part of this larger 
life, religion is affected by them and must share in their 
good or bad fortunes. 

And hence, if it be asked, what made the Parlia- 
ment of Religions possible? the answer must be: No 
one thing alone, but that all that went to make the 
World's Columbian Exposition and the Auxiliary 
Congresses possible, helped make possible the com- 
ing together of all the religions of the world. It was 
the great progress of our New World in the last four 
centuries that made its discovery a fact worthy of 
celebration; it was the invention of steam power that 
made this vast assemblage of other nations and the 
bringing of their products so easily possible; and but 
for the growth of constitutional monarchies and de- 
mocracies; and the large peace and good will of the 
nations of the earth, there would not have been even 



14 INTRODUCTION 

the desire, much less the possibility for the navies of 
the world to celebrate the victories of peace in the 
harbor of New York, and for all to meet in a friendly 
competitive exposition at Chicago. 

And but for the large commercial intercourse of 
Europe and America with Asia and Africa, and the 
facilities of travel and the growth of learning that 
made possible the study of the languages and religions 
of the far off East, there could have been no such 
friendly and intelligent interchange of views. The 
study of comparative religions in any large sense, 
belongs to the present generation. It was the dis- 
covery by scholars that the Sanscrit is the parent or 
root-language of the related languages of the Aryan 
peoples that at once disclosed the racial kinship that 
so quickly lifted the dark-skinned dwellers of India 
into social and religious recognition. It was this that 
made possible and turned the tide of scholarship into 
the fields and study of the philosophies, the Bibles 
and the religions that were old before Christ was 
born; old before the days of Moses or Abraham. 

And thus we see how, not one thing, but "all things 
have worked together for good;" worked together to 
make possible this latest and greatest of all the relig- 
ious meetings that was ever held. There have been 
great councils of the Christian religion; oecumenical 
councils of the Catholic church, and the Evangelical Al- 
liances of the Protestant divisions of Christianity ; and 
there have been the religious assemblies of the Jews; 
and the Mohammedan and other religions have had 
their convocations; but never before in the history of 
the world was there a Parliament of all the religions in 



INTRODUCTION 1 5 

which Christian, Catholic, Greek, Protestant, Ortho- 
dox and Liberals; Brahmins, Buddhist, Confucians, 
Parsees, Mohammedans, all met upon one platform; 
met in the spirit of humanity, of the brotherhood of 
man, that is larger than the names and sects and the 
differences of beliefs that have so long separated one 
from the other; kept them apart as strangers, if not 
indeed enemies. 

It is not strange that such a Parliament of Religions 
sent the touch and thrill of a new life to millions of 
minds and hearts throughout the world. Nor, is it 
strange that this long-delayed and hitherto impossible 
meeting, was looked upon with fear and disfavor by 
some, and especially those that cling to the religion 
of a form, a Book, or some exclusive and excluding 
dogma that shuts out the vision of the universal, of the 
all-inclusive, truth, love and life. The church of Eng- 
land refused officially to in any way recognize the 
Parliament, and the General Assembly of the Pres- 
byterian Church withheld its approval and from some 
of the other denominations it received but little en- 
couragement; but in spite of this the Parliament was 
held; and many of the leading divines of the churches 
that opposed it, took public part in its deliberations. 

Ths significant thing is, that this great Parliament 
of Religions has been held, and has taken its place 
as the greatest religious event in the world-history of 
these great years. As such, it marks the highest 
point of world-progress in the moral and religious life 
of mankind. 

The years all move one way. Progress, growth, 
world-learning is not in one thing; but in all- the all 



l6 INTRODUCTION 

in one; the one moving foorward, and not backward, 
and hence, the world can never be what it was be- 
fore. The knowledge, the friendship, the faith, the 
love, the hope of humanity has been quickened, en- 
larged and lifted to a higher plane by this coming to- 
gether of minds and hearts. 

The fact has been emphasized that man is not only 
a physical and mental but a religious being; and that 
beneath all the many religions, there is a religion; 
that within all there is a divine reality. 



III. 



In its last analysis, religion is the attitude of the 
spirit, the reverence, the trust, the love and hope of 
the heart as man faces the Infinite, the Unseen. And 
this attitude of the spirit implies, and rests upon the 
simple faith or feeling, that there is some bond of 
union between the finite and the infinite; between 
the soul and God. Without this there would be, and 
could be, no such thing as prayer, sacrifices, or any 
form of worship. There would be no such thing as 
religion. 

But this faith that is at first a feeling rather than a 
conclusion of reason, is not content to rest in this 
form but begins to ask questions about this Infinite, 
this Unseen to which it is drawn, and in which it 
trusts. And here begins the rational, the thought- 
side of religion. And it is at this point that the differ- 
ences begin to appear, and at last the differentiations 
into the great world-religions as the results of the 
many and different conceptions of the Infinite, an<3 



INTRODUCTION 17 

how that Infinite is to be best approached and wor- 
shiped. 

The lowest form of religion is that of the Fetich 
worshiper. Looking abroad upon earth and sky, he 
chooses from all, not a river, a tree or animal; not 
the moon, the sun or stars as the object of worship; 
but a pebble, a stick, a rag, as the expression of the 
Infinite; and this perhaps , as to him the symbol of 
the unchanging; for everything else seems to be chang- 
ing; the sun disappears at night, clouds and darkness 
shut out the world and the sky, even his own life is 
passing away; but the pebble changes not. 

A step higher, the idolater cuts or chisels a form 
of wood or stone and worships it as the image of the 
Infinite. Then the forces of nature are worshiped; 
and then life in the form of serpent, bird, cat or 
bull; then the spirits of the dead are apotheosized or 
worshiped as deities. 

In all this from Fetich and Idols to the worship of 
Nature and Life and the deification of the dead, there 
is the feeling or faith, however dimly realized or im- 
perfectly, conceived, that there is some bond of rela- 
tionship between the worshiper and the worshiped, 
or between man and the Infinite. And it is worship, 
a spiritual attitude of dependence of trust, of rever- 
ence and obedience; and hence, it is a form of relig- 
ion; a groping in the dark it may be; a "feeling after 
God," or what the mind thinks to be God; but still a 
religion. 

Then, with the growth of mind, comes the higher 
efforts of reason to more clearly conceive and define 
the idea of the Infinite, and the relations of man to 

Congress of Religions 2 



l8 INTRODUCTION 

that Infinite. And here open up the widest possible 
fields of thought, ranging all the way from Pantheism, 
the conception of the All, of Nature and Life, as the 
Infinite ; the Anthropomorphism that conceives of the 
Infinite as a magnified man, dwelling outside of Nat- 
ure and making the world and man in a mechanical 
way, on to the most exalted conceptions of the 
Infinite as Spirit, and the Universe as born, evolved, 
and not made; and the immanency of the Infinite in 
Nature and Life as the universal reason, soul, "over- 
soul" of the All; "God all and in all," and coming 
forth in the reason, the will, the conscience, the love 
and justice of man; and hence to be discriminated as 
Personal by and in the personal and self-consciousness 
of man. 

And here too, appear the wide ranges and differ- 
ences of belief as to the nature or moral qualities of 
the Infinite; the ways of approach, and the forms of 
worship. These cover the whole field from the con- 
ception that the forces of nature are angry and can 
be placated by gifts or sacrifices; on to the animal sac- 
rifices in the ceremonial worship of the Jews, and the 
Orthodox Christian conception that the anger of the 
Father was placated or his justice satisfied by the 
blood of his Son; and from this, on to the Liberal or 
new Theology, that says, God is as good as Christ; 
that the Father needed no such reconciliation, that 
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself;" 
and that the sacrifices required of man are a change 
of mind from the wrong to the right, and the offerings 
of duty and love on the altars of obedience and all hu- 
man service. 



INTRODUCTION 1 9 

When it is seen how many and wide are the dif- 
erences and distances of conceptions and creeds, 
the wonder will appear less that these worshipers 
have so long stood apart; and the gratitude will be 
greater, that they have all at last come together; not 
in the formal or even the implied concessions of the 
special faiths of any; but in the recognition and con- 
fession that all are parts or forms of the one uni- 
versal religion. And, let us hope, also, in the feeling that 
a better acquaintance one with the other, would lead 
to a clearer understanding, and the emphasizing of 
agreements in things held in common, and to the com- 
munion of fellowship and love in the spirit of all re- 
ligions that seek the union of man with the Infinite. 

And indeed, less than this cannot be supposed; for 
it would have been the merest and worst trifling 
with things sacred, to ask any religion that was not 
recognized in some real sense as such, to unite in a Par- 
liament of Religions. It was on the ground that the 
Secularists or Free-thinkers were not a religious body, 
had no religious beliefs to affirm, were denied a place 
in the Parliament, and not because of any special be- 
liefs held. And the Mormon church was excluded, 
not because of their Bible or faith or worship, but 
because of polygamous practices forbidden by the 
laws of the country, and from which they have not 
yet given satisfactory evidence of reformation. 

IV. 

The Fetisch worshipers cannot, historically con- 
sidered, be called a religion for they are below the 
plane of a literature, and hence have no Bible; but 



20 INTRODUCTION 

all the others, including those who worship idols, as 
parts of some historic religion, have a literature, and 
each has its sacred literature. And, it is worthy of 
note, that no religion having a Bible, has ceased to 
exist. The religion of Persia was scattered and driven 
from its native home by the wars of Alexander the 
Great, and the persecutions of the Mohammedans; 
but the followers of Zoroaster still abide in the mount- 
ains, and in the little colonies found in other lands. 
They are noted for their piety and benevolence, and 
the system of thought lives, not alone in the Zend 
Avesta, but in the powerful influence it has had upon 
Judaism and Christianity. 

It would be interesting and helpful in these "Fore- 
words" to give a brief outline of the history and doc- 
trines of the out-lying religions represented in the great 
Parliament, but this is far from an easy task. The sub- 
ject is large; our knowledge is limited; the lands and 
the religions are old and the beliefs have undergone 
many changes. Their literature is vast, and its more 
careful study is just now coming prominently into the 
foregrounds of thought; and at every step, the field 
is enlarging. 

It has been generally supposed that the early Greek 
philosophers were to some extent familiar with the 
learning of the Egyptians; but that their thought was 
in the main original; the result of the study of things, 
rather than books. That it received the impress of 
the Greek mind, is not doubted; but it is now believed 
that these philosophers came in contact with Indian 
thought through their intercourse with the Persians. 

Professor Richard Zarbe- makes the Hindoo doc- 

* The Monist. Jan. 1894. 



INTRODUCTION 21 

trines of the All-One, almost identical with the phil- 
osophy of the Ecliatices, he notes the fact that Thales, 
the father of Greek philosophy, imagines everything 
to have sprung from water, and that the oldest Vedic 
literature has the same idea. And he finds the same 
close resemblance between the doctrines of Anaxi- 
mander, Empedocles,and Democritus, and the corre- 
sponding teachings of the Hindu philosophy; and 
it is also claimed that Pythagoras derived his doctrine 
of the transmigration of souls from the same source. 

But the most suggestive, and theologically consid- 
ered, the most important, is the fact, quoted by Pro- 
fessor Garbe from Professor Weber, that the doctrine 
of the Logos, or Word in the Gospel of John, not only 
corresponds to the same in the Neo-Platinists, and in 
Philo; but that this great thought also was borrowed 
from India. And Professor Weber finds the closest 
resemblance between the Vach, a feminine noun, and 
the Logos, in the Gospel of John. The Vach, "was 
in the beginning;" "is the Consort of the Creator, in 
union with whom, and by whom, he accomplished 
his creation." 

The parallel between the birth of Christ and the 
birth of Buddha, has often been noted; it is too strik- 
ing, too close in particulars, to be accounted for on the 
ground of coincidence. The attempt of Christian 
apologists to make the origin of the Buddhist account 
of later date than the Christian account ; or the theory 
that the Buddhist was borrowed from the Christian, 
does not seem consistent with the most probable facts 
in the case. The probabilities are that the account 
of Buddha's birth existed hundreds of years before 
Christ was born. 



11 INTRODUCTION 

The Higher Criticism discredits the genuineness 
of the dreams and visions in relation to the miracu- 
lous conception, as given in Matthew and Luke; looks 
upon it as an after, or poetic accretion, a literary 
setting to the narrative, and not to be taken as a his- 
tory. And if not so understood, of what value are the 
long tables of geneology, if Joseph, the espoused hus- 
baad of Mary, was not in fact the father of the child 
Jesus? And may it not be, that this too, was bor- 
rowed from India? Nor should such a suggestion 
trouble Christians; for if Jesus, the Christ was the 
natural son of Joseph and Mary, the higher natural 
in the beauty and greatness of his life remains just 
the same; and the sacredness of the possibilities of 
natural generation is by so much exalted. 

These are but suggestions of the wonderful field of 
thought that is opening up in the study of compara- 
tive religions; and of the significance of the great im- 
petus given to such studies by this World-Parliament. 
We are beginning to see that, like language and liter- 
ature and government, religion has been an evolu- 
tion; a growth from the lower to the higher; that 
religions have had their childhood, and that the higher 
has grown up out of the lower; that the present is 
related to the past; and that past, longer and greater 
than has been thought. 

Dr. Matheson* compares the early religious life of 
India to the freshness, the gladness and optimism 
of youth, when all the world seems joyous. Such he 
reads from the early Hymns of the Rig Vedas. 

Then there came the seriousness, the burdens of 
growing years; the facing and bearing of the hardships, 

* The Distinctive Messages of The Old Religions. 



INTRODUCTION 2 3 

the evils and sorrows of life; and with these came the 
melancholy, the pessimism, the despair of life. 

Then came the effort to get free from these bur- 
dens; and in this was the birth of the Indian Philoso- 
phy; the transition from the Vedas, to the creed, or 
philosophy of Brahmanims, found in the Upanishads. 
Life had come to be thought of as an evil, and not a 
good; and the one question was, How shall the soul 
find deliverance from its evil world ? And in the solu- 
tion of this, was unfolded their theory of God; and 
of the nature of man and the cure of the evils from 
which he suffers. 

Life is a troubled dream, the sense world is an 
illusion, the only reality is spirit. Relief can be found 
only in dispelling the illusion, awaking from the dream, 
coming to the reality of Spirit in self and the Infinite. 
But if life, the sense universe, is a dream, there must 
be a dreamer. That dreamer is God; but before the 
dream began, there was the Infinite repose; and this 
was the God, Brahma. Then the dream began, the 
illusions appeared; and when God is thought of in 
this light, he is called Vishnu. In the struggle with 
the dream, God is thought of as Siva, the "destroyer," 
and the destroyer is worshiped because he it is who 
dispels the illusion and leads the soul to rest in the 
repose of Infinite Spirit. 

One can imagine how such a philosophy could be 
wrought out of the experience of life. First there is 
the gladness of youth when life is a delight; then 
come the storms, the passions, the unrest of sense 
desire; then the struggle to overcome these, and 
through their destruction, the soul enters into rest; 



24 INTRODUCTION 

the repose of Spirit in Spirit; of the soul in God. 
And one can easily see the resemblance of such a 
philosophy to some of the theories of mind cure or 
"Christian Science;" in which matter, disease, is a 
dream, a sense-illusion, and not a reality; and the 
cure is in dispelling the illusion and awaking to the 
reality of the self as spirit. 

Out of such a philosophy came naturally the doc- 
trine of reincarnation; for if the soul did not awake 
from this dream of the senses, it could not enter into 
the rest of the real; and hence had to come back 
again and again if need be, or until the illusion was 
dispelled. 

Such a system of thought was beyond the many, 
and hence became the possession of the few; and 
with this arose a rigidly exclusive system of caste by 
which the higher were separated from the lower. And 
it was the powerful reaction against this that found 
expression in Buddhism. 

The story of the life of this great Teacher and re- 
ligious reformer, is familiar; how, going out from the 
palace he saw for the first time the sick, the aged 
and the dead; and leaving all, went away into the 
wilderness to meditate and pray. After four years he 
found the truth, the illuminism of life; and became a 
teacher and the founder of the religion that bears his 
name, and that has long been and is now, the faith 
of hundreds of millions of our human family. 

Buddha sought to universalize religion, to make 
the possessions of the few, the wealth of all; he 
abolished caste, and his teachers went everywhere 
among the people. He did not deny the God of the 



INTRODUCTION 1$ 

Brahmins, but rather ignored him; for he was so far 
removed from the world as to have little to do with 
it and to be of little if any value, in it. 

But Buddha faced the same old hard problem of 
the evils of life, and the one question was, how to 
escape them. The solution was in universalizing the 
consciousness of life's evils so as to realize them as 
the common lot of all; and in this, and thinking of 
the sufferings of others, and through kindness and 
helpfulness, each soul would forget its own sorrows; 
in bearing the burdens of others, its own would drop 
off. And he taught also self-denial; that the desires 
of the senses should be reduced; and it naturally 
followed, that the less one wanted the more likely 
would he be to have what he wanted; if one wanted 
nothing, he had it already. 

There is much that is beautiful, Christ-like in the 
theory of Buddhism; but somehow it has failed to 
fulfill its promise. There is a dreamy mysticism in 
both this and the Brahman religion that lacks in the 
practical power to overcome the evils of which they 
complain. They seek rest, rather than the battle 
and victory through which alone rest can be found. 

InPersia, the problem of evil took another shaping 
in its thought solution. To Zoroaster, life was not a 
dream, but a tremendous fact ; evil was not an illusion, 
but an awful reality. And for such a fact, he could 
find no other explanation than in the supposition of 
an evil cause; and that cause was eternal; it was in 
the nature of things; there was a good God, Ormuzd; 
and a bad God, Ahriman, who opposed the good. 
Ormuzd is the source of all truth, beauty, goodness; 
Ahriman, the source of all evil. 



26 INTRODUCTION 

The world is the battle-scene of these contending 
powers; each has his angels; Brahminism and Bud- 
dhism recognized evil; but it was an illusion, a dream ; 
an unreality; with Zoroaster it was a fact. And it was 
from this Persian dualism that thejews are supposed to 
have received the doctrine of a personal Devil that has 
formed, so large a part in our so-called orthodox 
Christian theology. 

Over in China, the religious thought was less specu- 
lative; less spiritual; more earthly; it is the backward- 
looking religion; it faces the past rather than the 
future. La-otzie conceived of a perfect Patriarchal 
government in a distant past, and that it was in a 
return to this that the highest good was to be found. 
Confucius sought to realize this by codifying the 
ancient laws and by social reforms in civil affairs. The 
religion of China is rather a paternal government in 
which the nation is regarded as a family, and the 
Emperor as the father. It is, in this sense a practical 
working religion; corresponding somewhat to the 
ethical culture societies of our time. Like Buddhism 
it is Agnostic, rather than Atheistic. Through its an- 
cestral worship it has cultivated a profound reverence 
for the past, and a conservatism that has persevered 
that ancient form of civilization through the long 
ages, and makes it the mighty Empire of to-day. 

The Jain religion, and the Brahmo-Somaj that 
was represented in the Parliament, are recent modi- 
fied forms of Brahmanism and Buddhism. The 
learned and pious Mozoomdar, who is the successor of 
the late Chunder Sen, emphasizes the thesitic concep- 
tion; the Brahmo-Somaj of which he is the hon- 



INTRODUCTION 27 

ored leader, is much the same in thought and spirit 
as our Christian Unitarianism. 

It is not necessary to dwell upon Mohammedanism; 
its Bible, the Koran, and its history are within the 
easy reach of all. It was a powerful factor in the 
modern civilization of Europe; its numbers are large, 
and its hold upon the Eastern nations shows no signs 
of weakening. 

Judaism is also well known; its history is the most 
marvelous and pathetic of that of any people. Its 
simple doctrines of God and righteousness, were 
never so powerful as in the present; and the modern 
or Reform Judaism, so ably represented in the Par- 
liament by Dr. Hirsch and others, will make this 
power still greater in the future 

Christianity was represented in its three great his- 
toric forms of the Greek, the Catholic, and the Protest- 
ant; the latter including both the Orthodox and the 
Liberal denominations. The special dogmas of Or- 
thodoxy; original sin, penal or substitutional atone- 
ment, and endless punishment; had little if indeed 
any place in early Christianity. They are Latin ac- 
cretions to the earlier conception and interpretation 
of the Greek Fathers, Clement of Alexandria, Origen 
and Athanasius; and came in with the ascendency of 
the Roman or Latin church. 

The Reformation of the sixteenth century sought 
to correct abuses of church authority and forms, 
rather than the errors of theology. The Reformers 
accepted in the main, the doctrines of Rome; and 
from then till now, on the pivotal or essential points 
of theology, the Catholic and the Orthodox churches 
have been substantially at one. 



28 INTRODUCTION 

The beliefs of the Liberal churches, or the teach- 
ings of the new theology, are at bottom a return to 
the earlier Greek interpretations. It is an effort to 
get back of the Latin accretions; back of the four- 
teen centuries of the Latin dogmas of the fall of 
man, total depravity, substitutional atonement, and 
endless punishment; back to the teachings of Christ 
and the Apostles and of the early church. 

The new theology does not accept the story of the 
fall of man as a literal fact; it believes that man has 
risen, and not fallen; that he began low and has come 
up higher; it believes that at center man is a spirit, 
is in the image of God; that humanity is divine; that 
the Christ was the fullness of the divine in man; that 
"God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself;" 
and not that Christ came to reconcile God to man. It 
believes that God is as good as Christ; as loving and 
forgiving; that Christ was the express image of the 
Father; and that the essence of Christianity is in 
making man like Christ. It believes in a continuous 
and progressive revelation of truth, of life; of God to 
man, and in man; and it limits not this vast process 
to the few years of time, but sees it going on in the 
empire of souls, in the world beyond death; and be- 
lieves that to every soul, existence will sometime, 
in the end, be a blessing and not a curse. 

The foundations of religion are deeper than books; 
they are in the nature and needs of man, and the an- 
swering fullness of God, Religions make Bibles, and 
not Bibles religions. On the rational or thought-side, 
theology is the attempt to define the nature of God; 
and the relations of man to God; on the worshiping 



INTRODUCTION 29 

and working side, religion is the life of man going out 
in its aspirations after the Divine, trying to be like 
God; to think his thoughts, to know and do his will; 
to rise from the basilar to the supernal, from animal- 
ism to spirituality; to make this a transactional world 
of truth, righteousness and love; and all in the hope 
of the life to come. 

The institutionalized forms of all these phases of 
thought, of worship and work, constitute the churches 
or religions of our world. And it should be fully 
confessed, all have a measure of the divine truth and 
life; that ail are the children of God; God's Confu- 
cians, Brahmins and Buddhists; God's Zoroastrians, 
and Mohammedans; God's Jews and Christians; yes, 
and God's children of the dark land who have not 
yet risen above the worship of a stick, a pebble. 

Henceforth our vision should be uplifted, our feel- 
ings more tender, our love and catholicity larger. It 
will not be so easy hereafter to send "the poor 
heathen" to hell; we have seen them; have taken 
them by the hand ; have felt that they are our brothers. 
And all will rejoice that the great Parliament of Re- 
ligions is to be perpetuated under the name of the 
"World's Congress Fraternity;" for fraternal, histor- 
ical and other forms of world-work and progress. 

H. W. Thomas. 
Chicago, Jan. 1893. 



THE WORLD'S CONGRESS 
OF RELIGIONS 

CHAPTER I 
FIRST WORDS 

The Secretary of one of the great religious societies 
of India quoted from their ancient history to prove 
that Asoka, the most renowned of the ancient Bud- 
dhist emperors, had convened, twenty centuries ago, 
the first parliament of religions. As a result of that 
congress, he caused stones to be set up in all the prov- 
inces of his extensive kingdom and whereon he caused 
to be written: "He who reviles the religion of others 
throws difficulties in the way of his own, for his con- 
duct can not be right." 

Three hundred years ago, the great teacher Com- 
enius urged the necessity of such a convocation. 
During the French Revolution a convention was con- 
vened in Paris, but with indifferent results. In 1870 
the Free Religious Association of Boston discussed 
the desirability of such a convention for the presen- 
tation to the world of the principles of all the prin- 
cipal creeds and religions. A few years later Pres- 
ident Warren of the Boston University preached a 
sermon on that subject; and when the magnificent 

31 



32 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

opportunity of the World's Columbian Exposition ap- 
peared, the plan was conceived to be practical. 
Charles Carroll Bonney formulated the first plan in 
the summer of 1889. Committees were formed and 
the organization for the mighty and far reaching con- 
vocation of thought was completed. Public approval 
was almost unanimous. A few, steeped in the shriv- 
elling tinctures of creed, characterized it as Satan's 
means for the dissemination of heterodoxy or for the 
exaltation of Roman Catholicism, they scarcely knew 
which; but the discordant tones were soon shamed 
to silence and the great work began. 

A number of those bright minds who were called 
by man to take part in the World's Congress of 
Faith, received a higher call from God to pass on 
into the greater convocation of eternity. Ex-Presi- 
dent Hayes was to be at the head of moral and social 
reform; James G. Blaine gave official prestige all 
over the world to the great cause but he did not live 
to see it completed; Cardinal Archbishop Manning 
gave his hearty support, but his days on earth were 
ended before the event came to pass; Lord Alfred 
Tennyson was to prepare a poem for that most 
memorable occasion, but his pen was never to write 
again; likewise went Bishop Brooks of Boston; John 
Greenleaf Whittier and many others of the most 
brilliant lights of the world. But there were hosts of 
other great thinkers and they gave their best to the 
magnificent convention. 

There were 200 individual congresses that met in 
the two halls of the "Art Institute," or more properly 
the Memorial Art Palace on the Lake Front, at the 
foot of Adams Street, Chicago. 



FIRST WORDS 33 

The two halls used were named the "Hall of Co- 
lumbus" and the "Hall of Washington." Ten strokes 
on the new Liberty Bell, one for each of the ten great 
religions, proclaimed on the afternoon of Sept. nth, 
1893, the formal opening of the "World's Parliament 
of Religions." On the old Liberty Bell of Philadel- 
phia was inscribed, "Proclaim liberty throughout the 
land and to all the inhabitants thereof;" on the new 
Liberty Bell, whose first service was to open the 
greatest convention of men ever assembled, was in- 
scribed, "A New commandment I give unto you, that 
ye love one another.' 

The people began to come early and under the ban- 
ner of a common hope met on that day in the strang- 
est gathering of men the world has seen. No tie of 
blood bound them. Jew sat by Gentile; Russian by 
Hindoo; Greek by Negro; Saxon by Gaul. There 
were black faces and white; yellow and red; bearded 
and shaven. 

No great scheme of universal power or conquest 
held them. Men were on that platform who owe al- 
legiance to the Kings of twenty empires. Yet some 
of them had traveled 13,000 miles around the world 
to meet under the bare rafters of the Hall of Co- 
lumbus. 

To the eye they had nothing in common. They 
were men of many tongues; of all races. They wore 
strange robes; turbans and tunics; crosses and cres- 
cents; flowing hair and tonsured scalps. There were 
spots of Oriental color and bits of Occidental gloom. 

From the four corners of the earth these men had 
come together to forward the cause of a common 

Congress of Religions 3 



34 the world's congress of religions 

humanity here and hereafter. They had come to dem- 
onstrate by their presence the vital power of that 
universal spirit which drives men everywhere to look 
upward at a star. They had come to teach the an- 
cient lesson, professed but never practiced, that men 
are brothers and all the world is kin. They had 
come to make memorable the most historic day of all 
this latest century. 

It was the peaceful gathering of warring creeds; 
the parliament of the world's religions. Proselytism 
and persecution were forgotten. New England Pur- 
itan shook hands with a Prince of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church. The high-priest of the Brahmins, old- 
est of all religions, leaned upon the shoulder of a 
Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, himself 
the founder of the sect. Over them all was lifted the 
common idea of a great Divinity, and in that idea 
they were one. 

Many notable gatherings have the gray walls of 
the Art Institute sheltered since the opening of the 
world's congresses. Leaders in every line of human 
effort and endeavor have met and laid before the 
world the ripest fruits of their toil. Great men have 
told how nature was being robbed of her secrets; 
how the lightning was tamed; how the ocean was 
bridged; how the stars were measured. But on Sept. 
nth, 1893, met disciples of Christ, disciples of Mo- 
hammed, disciples of Buddha, disciples of Brahma, 
and, standing together in the name of a common God, 
asked a blessing upon mankind and all the works of 
men. It was the crown upon the head of gathered 
nations; the climax of all the Columbian Exposition 
has made possible* 



FIRST WORDS 35 

The people felt the importance of the day. They 
filled the great Hall of Columbus, crowded the aisles, 
banked themselves back of the rising tiers of chairs. 
Before 10 o'clock, the hour set for the great congress 
to open, men and women were turned away to fill 
other halls where overflow meetings were held. In 
the splendid audience, numbering all of 4,000, were 
hundreds of notable men. They were scholars, 
teachers, dreamers, men who have looked forward to 
the day when the united religionists of the world 
might move forward, unbroken, against the forces of 
infidelity and disbelief. They were broad-minded, 
liberal men, who have worked their lives through to 
forward the coming of that day. To them the opening 
of the World's Parliament of Religions was like the 
dawning of a long-expected sun. When the long line 
of delegates, many of them in splendid robes, moved 
forward to the platform, tears of joy glistened in many 
earnest eyes. 

From the grand organ peel the inspiring strains of 
"Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow.'' All are 
on their feet. Men of all religions are singing the 
Doxology. Then his Eminence, James Cardinal Gib- 
bons, splendid in the scarlet and black robes of his 
office, steps to the front of the platform. He lifts his 
thin white hands above the bowed heads. "Our 
Father, who art in Heaven," he begins. Thousands 
follow him in repeating the Lord's Prayer, among 
them many of the distinguished delegates upon the 
platform. Already the men of all religions have 
found a common creed. 

After the majestic strains of the Doxology, sung by 



36 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

3, 500 voices, had died away, Cardinal Gibbons, in 
his scarlet skull cap and cloak, stepped forward and, 
after crossing himself, led in the Lord's Prayer. Then 
President Bonney addressed the vast audience, say- 
ing in the main: 

Worshipers of God and lovers of man, let us rejoice 
that we have lived to see this glorious day. Let us 
give thanks to the eternal God, whose mercy endureth 
forever, that we are permitted to take part in the sol- 
emn and majestic event of a World's Congress of Re- 
ligions. The importance of this event cannot be over- 
estimated. Its influence on the future relations of the 
various nations of men cannot be too highly esteemed. 
If, this congress shall faithfully execute the duties with 
which it has been charged it will become a joy of the 
whole earth and stand in human history like a new 
Mount Zion, crowned with glory, and marking the 
actual beginning of a new epoch of brotherhood and 
peace. It is inspiring to think that in every part of 
the world many of the worthiest of mankind, who 
would gladly join us here if that were in their power, 
this day lift their hearts to the Supreme Being in 
earnest pra5^er for the harmony and success of this 
congress. A distinguished representative of India, 
who has come to participate in this parliament, tells us 
that twenty centuries ago a similar convocation was 
called by the King of his country. Great indeed must 
be his felicity in now attending and taking part in a 
religious congress in which all the continents of the 
earth have actual representation. In this congress the 
word religion means the love and worship of God and 
the love and service of man. As the finite can never 
fully comprehend the infinite nor perfectly express its 
own view of the divine, it necessarily follows that indi- 



FIRST WORDS 37 

vidual opinions of the divine nature and attributes will 
differ. But properly understood, these varieties of 
views are not causes of discord and strife, but rather 
incentives to deeper interest and examination. The 
fraternal union of the religions of the world will come 
when each seeks truly to know how God has revealed 
himself to the other and remembers the inexorable law 
that with what judgment it judges it shall itself be 
judged. We seek to unite in this congress all religion 
against irreligion; to make the golden rule the basis 
of this union, and to present to the world substantial 
unity of many religions in the good deeds of the re- 
ligious life. Without controversy or any attempt to 
pronounce judgment upon any matter of faith, or 
worship, or religious opinion, we seek a better knowl- 
edge of the religious condition of all mankind with an 
earnest desire to be useful to each other and to all 
others who love truth and righteousness. 

"In the eminent name of God," declared the rev- 
erend and venerable Archbishop Dionysios Latas of 
Greece, "I ask a blessing upon this parliament." Be- 
neath his outstretched hand bent Christian, Buddhist, 
and Mohammedan alike. 

ADDRESS OF DR. BARROWS. 

Then came the man who has done more than any 
other one person to make the Parliament of Religions 
the success it is, the Rev. Dr. John H. Barrows, 
Secretary of the Committee on Organization. Being 
introduced by President Bonney, he stepped to the 
desk and said in a voice that could be heard in the 
remotest corner of the hall: 



38 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

If my heart did not overflow with cordial welcome 
at this hour, which promises to be a great moment 
in history, it would be because I had lost the spirit 
of manhood and had been forsaken by the spirit of 
God. For more than two j T ears the General Commit- 
tee, which I have the honor to represent, working to- 
gether in unbroken harmony and presenting the picture 
of prophecy of a united Christendom, have carried on 
their arduous and sometimes appalling task, in hap- 
py anticipation of this golden hour. Your coming has 
constantly been in our thoughts and hopes and fervent 
prayers. I rejoice that your long voyages and journeys 
are over, and that here, in this young capital of our 
Western civilization, you find men eager for truth 
sympathetic with the spirit of universal human broth- 
erhood, and loyal, I believe, to the highest they know, 
glad and grateful to Almighty God that they see your 
faces and are to hear your words. 

The world calls us and we call ourselves a Christian 
people. We believe in the gospels and in him whom 
they set forth as "the light of the world," and Chris- 
tian America, which owes so much to Columbus and 
Luther, to the Pilgrim Fathers, and to John Wesley, 
which owes so much to the Christian Church and 
the Christian college and the Christian school, wel- 
comes to-day the earnest disciples of other faiths and 
the men of all faiths who, from manj^ lands, have 
flocked to this jubilee of civilization. 

Cherishing the light which God has given us and 
eager to send this light every whither, we do not be- 
lieve that God, the Eternal Spirit, has left himself with- 
out witness in non-Chirstian nations. There is a di. 
vine light enlightening every man. 

Dr. Barrows concluded his address by welcoming 
individually and severally all those from every worthy 



FIRST WORDS 39 

creed and faith on earth then assembled upon the 
platform about him. 

HEARTY WELCOME FROM ARCHBISHOP 
FEEHAN. 

Gray-haired Archbishop Feehan was presented by 
President Bonney. In his low deliberate voice he 
said: 

I give you a greeting in the name of the Catholic 
Church to the members of this Parliament of Relig- 
ions. Surely we all regard it as a time and a day of 
highest interest, for we have the commencement of an 
assemblage unique in the history of the world. Men 
have come from distant lands, from many thrones; 
they represent many types or races ; they represent 
many forms of feeling. In all there is a great diversity, 
and in all there is a great, high motive, for of all the 
things that our city has seen or heard during these 
last months, the highest and the greatest is now to be 
presented to-day. For earnest men, learned and elo- 
quent, of different faiths, have come to speak and tell 
us of those things that after all are of the highest and 
deepest interest to us all. We are interested in ether- 
eal things, we are interested in beautiful things, we 
admire the wonders of the new city that has sprung 
up on the southern end of our great Chicago, but when 
learned men, men representing the thought of the 
world on religion, when they come to tell us of God, 
and of his truth, and of life, of death, of immortality, 
of the judgment, of justice, of goodness, and of char- 
ity, then I listen to what will surpass infinitely the 
most learned. Aye, the most able men may tell us of 
material things. Those men that have come together 



40 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

will tell of their systems of faith, without— as has been 
well said by Dr. Barrows— without one atom of sur- 
render of what each one believes to be the truth for 
him. As a privilege which I prize much has been 
given to me, I bid them all in my own name, and all 
that I represent, a most cordial welcome. 

CARDINAL GIBBONS. 

Cardinal Gibbons was next called upon to speak. 
He surveyed the vast audience. To many of his 
auditors his kindly face was already familiar. He 
said: 

Ladies and Gentlemen: Your honored President 
has informed you that if I were to consult the interest 
of my health I should be in bed this morning, but as 
I was announced to say a word in response to the kind 
speeches that have been offerd up to us I could not 
fail to present myself at least to show my interest 
in the great undertaking. I would be wanting in my 
dut}' as a minister of the Catholic Church if I did not 
say that it is our desire to present the claims of the 
Catholic Church to the observation and if possible to 
the acceptance of every right-minded man that will 
listen to us; but we appeal only to the tribunal of con- 
science and of intellect. I feel that in possessing the 
faith I possess, a treasure compared with which all 
the treasures of this world are but dross, instead of 
having those treasures in my coffers I would like to 
share them with others, especially as I am none the 
poorer in making the others the richer. But though 
we do not agree in matters of faith, as the Most Rev- 
erend Archbishop of Chicago has said, there is one 
platform on which we all stand united. It is the plat- 



FIRST WORDS 4I 

form of charity, of humanity, and of mutual benevo- 
lence. [Applause.] 

Our blesssed Christ came upon this earth to break 
down the wall of partition that separated race from 
race, people from people, and tribe from tribe, and as 
man is one people, one family, we recognize God as 
our common father and this Christ as our brother. 
[Applause.] And we would have all people listen to 
the lesson given to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ 
in that beautiful parable of the good Samaritan, which 
we all ought to follow. We know that the good Sa- 
maritan rendered assistance to his strange brother, 
who was of a different name, a different religion, a 
different faith, a strange nationality, and with a wide 
difference in social life. That is the model we all 
should follow. 

I trust we will all leave this hall animated by a 
greater love for one another. Christ the Lord is our 
model, I say. We cannot, like out divine Savior, give 
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, walking to the 
lame, and strength to the paralyzed; we cannot work 
the miracle which Christ has wrought, but there are 
other miracles far more beneficial to ourselves, and 
that is the miracle of charity and of love to our fellow 
men. Let no man say, "Am I my brothers' keeper?" 
That was the language of Cain. And I say to you all 
here to-day, no matter what may be your faith, that 
you are and ought to be your brothers' keeper. What 
would become of us to-day, Christians, if Christ the 
Lord had said, "Am I my brother's keeper?" We all 
would be walking in darkness and in the shadow of 
death; and if to-day we enjoy in this great and benef- 
icent land of ours the inestimable blessings of a Chris- 
tian civilization we owe it to him who has not said, 
"Am I my brother's keeper?" We owe it to Christ, 



4-2 THE WORLD* S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

who said, "I am the brother of you all; I love you 
all; I shed my blood for you all, and I have redeemed 
you all." Therefore let us thank God for the bless- 
ings he has bestowed upon us. And never do we 
perform an act so pleasing to God as when we ex- 
tend the right hand of fellowship or of practical 
love to the suffering. Never do we approach nearer 
to our Maker than when we cause the sunlight of 
heaven to beam upon the broken soul of our suffering 
brother. Never do we prove ourselves more worthy to 
be called the children of God, our Father, than when 
we cause flow 7 ers of joy and gladness to work in our 
hearts, and, as Paul has said, religion pure and unde- 
fined before God and the Father is too visit the orphan 
and the fatherless and the widow in their tribulations, 
and to keep one's self unspotted from the world. 

AUGUSTA CHAPIN, D.D. 

President Bonney introduced the Rev. Augusta J. 
Chapin, D.D., who spoke as follows: 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am strangely 
moved as I stand here to-day and attempt to real- 
ize what it means that you are here from so many 
lands representing so many phases of religious thought 
and life and what it means that I am here in the 
midst of this unique assembly to speak a word for 
womanhood and to represent woman's part in this great 
religious parliament. Woman could not have had a 
part in it in her own right and person even one gen- 
eration of men in the past. She could not have par- 
ticipated in it for two reasons, one that her presence 
would not have been thought of or tolerated, another 
that she herself was too weak to attempt, too un- 



FIRST WORDS 43 

skilled to have availed herself of the privilege of 
speaking for herself had it been extended to her. 

I am not an old woman and yet my memory runs 
back easily to the time when in all the modern world 
there was not one college or university well equipped 
which opened its doots to women students, and there 
was a time when in all the modern world no woman 
had been ordained or even acknowledged as a relig- 
ious teacher or preacher. Now the doors of all are 
thrown wide open to her both in our own and in many 
other lands. 

I welcome you, my sisters, who have come with 
beating hearts, high hopes, and reverent purposes to 
this great feast, to participate not only in this parlia- 
ment but in the great congresses which are associated 
with it. Isabella of Spain had a prophetic vision, she 
beheld not only a new world, but beheld a new future 
and an emancipated and intelligent womanhood [ap- 
plause] and a strengthened religion to bless the world. 
I welcome you all to the fulfillment of her grand vis- 
ion. 

MR. HIGINBOTHAM'S WORDS OF WELCOME. 

Harlow N. Higinbotham, President of the World's 
Columbian Exposition, next stepped down to the 
front and said: 

' It affords me infinite pleasure to welcome the dis- 
tinguished gentlemen who compose this august body. 
It is a matter of satisfaction and pride that the rela- 
tions existing between the peoples of the earth are of 
such a friendly nature as to make this gathering pos- 
sible. I have long cherished the hope that nothing 
would intervene to prevent the full fruition of the 



44 the world's congress of religions 

labors of your honest Chairman. I apprehend that the 
fruitage of this parliament will richly compensate him 
and the world and more than justify his efforts and 
prove the wisdom of his work. It is a source of satis- 
faction that to the residents of a new city in a far 
country should be accorded this great privilege and 
high honor. The meeting of so many illustrious and 
learned men under such circumstances evidences that 
kindly spirit and feeling that exist throughout the 
world. To me this is the proudest work of our Ex- 
position. No man, high or low, learned or unlearned, 
that will not watch with increasing interest the pro- 
ceedings of this parliament. Whatever may be the 
differences in the religions you present there is a 
sense in which we are all alike, there is a common 
plain on which we are all brothers. We owe our be- 
ing to conditions that are exactly the same. Our 
journey through this world is by the same route We 
have the same senses, hopes, ambitions, joys, and 
sorrows, and these to my mind augur strongly and 
almost conclusively a common destiny. To me there 
is much satisfaction and pleasure in the fact that we 
are brought face to face with men that come to us 
bearing the ripest wisdom of the ages. They come in 
the friendliest spirit that, I trust, will be augmented 
by their intercourse with us and with each other. I 
am hoping, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that your 
parliament will prove to be a golden mile-stone on the 
highway of civilization — a golden stairway leading up 
to the table-land of a grander, higher, and more per- 
fect condition, where peace will ever reign and the 
enginery of war be known no more forever. 






FIRST WORDS 45 

FROM A NEW ENGLAND PURITAN. 

The Rev. Alexander McKenzie, a Congregationalist 
prominent in New England, said in part: 

I suppose everybody who speaks here this morning 
stands for something and every soul has its own faith. 
The only claim I have here rests upon the fact that I 
am one of the original settlers. I stand here repre- 
senting New England Puritans, the men who made 
this gathering possible. Puritanism came early to 
this country with a particular work to do, and it has 
continued diligently in the work it had in hand. There 
are persons who wish the Puritan had been somebody 
else; but he was not. 

We in this country have no great cathedrals, but we 
have log schoolhouses, and log schoolhouses where 
characters of men and women are formed are the grand- 
est of all cathedrals. We have not painted Madonnas, 
yet we have taken women in the name of the faith and 
lifted her up in motherhood until she stands for all 
that is noblest and sweetest in human life. 

ARCHBISHOP OF ZANTE SPEAKS. 

President Bonney introduced the Most Rev. 
Dionysios Latas, Archbishop of Zante, Greece, the 
head of the Greek Church, who, adorned with all 
the emblems of his religious office, arose, was re- 
ceived with great applause, and addressed the par- 
liament as follows: 

I consider myself happy in having set my foot on 
this platform of the congress of the different nations 
and peoples of the earth. I thank the great American 
Nation, and especially the superiors of this congress, 



46 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

because by this invitation I have had the opportunity 
to satisfy my desire which I have had from a long 
time ago to visit and see this fine, this most glorious 
country. Most honorable ladies and gentlemen, my 
voice perhaps for the little kingdom of Greece from 
which I come means very little compared with the 
voices of many of you who represent here great and 
powerful States, extensive places and numerous na- 
tions, and which I pray that the Almighty may bless 
them and continue the history of the Nation: but the 
church to which I belong is extensive, is great, and 
my heart is great. I salute you in the name of the 
great Kahn as my brothers in Jesus Christ, from whom 
we all draw our faith in God as it radiates out in this 
world. I salute you in the name of the divinely in- 
spired gospel, which, according to our faith, is the 
salutation of the soul of man and the happiness of 
all the souls in this world. And to the other great 
Kahn I salute you as my friends in the eminent ideas 
and sentiments which form a part of every man in 
the world and of all men, for we all have a common 
Creator and consequently a common Father in God 
Almighty. 

A WORD FROM INDIA. 

P. C. Mazoomdar of India spoke as follows: 

The welcome and recognition which you give to In- 
dia are gratifying to hundreds of thousands of liberal 
religious thinkers in that continent, and in behalf of 
my countrymen, so many of whom are here present, 
I give you my heart}' thanks. You have realized the 
teachings of our Shinta ; you have demonstrated and 
realized the principles of our great religious leaders. 
India claims a place in the brotherhood of nations. 



FIRST WORDS 47 

Our prehistoric forefathers worshiped the only living 
God on the icy crowned summits of the Himalayas, 
while we to-day worship the same living Spirit of 
God on our river banks and in our cities. Ladies and 
gentlemen, when our religion declined and Monotheism 
flourished, when the European conscience gave us the 
light of Asia, the perfection of whose moral idea was 
in the teaching of human kind, when Buddhism de. 
clined, when adversity roiled over her country like a 
destructive wave and her freedom was gone, our great- 
ness was gone, yet God remained. India's ancient re- 
ligion remained, the spiritual vitality of the nation 
remained. Let us lay our humble tribute of love and 
honor before your august tribunal, and pray to God 
that he may bless your labors with prosperity and 
success. 

The Hon. Pung Kwang Yu, representative from 
the Emperor of China to the World's Parliament of 
Religion, spoke through an interpreter as follows: 

On behalf of the imperial Government of China I 
take great pleasure in responding to the cordial words 
which the Chairman of the General Committee and 
others have spoken to-day. For the first time men of 
various faiths meet in one great hall to report what 
they believe and the grounds for their belief. I have 
been requested to prepare an address on Confucianism. 
The great Sage of China, who is honored not only by 
the millions of our land but throughout the world, be- 
lieved that duty was summed up in "reciprocity," and 
I think the word "reciprocity" finds a new meaning 
and glory in the proceedings of this historic parlia- 
ment. I am glad that the great Empire of China has 
accepted the invitation of those who have called this 
parliament, and is to be represented in this great school 



4.8 the world's congress of religions 

of comparative religion. Only the happiest results 
will come, I am sure, from our meeting together in 
the spirit of friendliness. Each may learn from the 
others some lessons, I trust, of charity and good-will, 
and discover what is excellent in other faiths than 
his own. In behalf of my government and people I 
extend to the representatives gathered in this great 
hall the friendliest salutations, and to those who have 
spoken I give my most cordial thanks. 

GREETING FROM RUSSIA. 

Prince Serge Welkovsky addressed the Parliament 
on behalf of the Russian people as follows: 

Those who during the last week have had the oppor- 
tunity of attending not only the congresses of one 
single church, but who could witness different con- 
gresses of different churches and congregations must 
have been struck with a noticeable fact. Not in one 
of these congresses did a speaker forget that he be- 
longed to humanity, and that his own church or con- 
gregation was but a starting point, a center for a 
further and illimited radiation. 

If any individual, an}^ community, any congregation, 
any church possesses a portion of truth and of good, 
let that truth shine for everybody, let that good be- 
come the property of every one. The substitution of 
the word "mine" by the word "ours" and that of 
"ours" by the word "everyone's," this is what will 
secure a fruitful result to our collective efforts as well 
as to our individual activities. 

HIS GREAT HOPE REALIZED. 

The Rt -Rev. Reuchi Shibata, representing Shin- 
toism and the Emperor of Japan in the Parliament 
of Religions, said: 






FIRST WORDS 49 

I cannot help doing honor to the Congress of Relig- 
ions held here in Chicago as the result of the pa- 
tient effort of these philanthropic brothers who have 
undertaken this the greatest meeting ever held. It 
was fourteen years ago that I expressed in my country 
the hope that there should be a friendly meeting be- 
tween the world's religionists and now I realize my 
hope with great joy in being able to attend these phe- 
nomenal meetings. In the history of the past we read 
of repeated and fierce conflicts betweeen different re- 
ligious creeds, which sometimes ended in war. But 
that time has passed away and things have changed 
with advancing civilization. It is a great blessing not 
only to the religions themselves but also to human 
affairs that the different religionists can thus gather 
in a friendly way and exchange their thoughts and 
opinions on the important problems of the age. I trust 
that these repeated meetings will gradually increase 
the fraternal relations between the different religionists 
in investigating the truths of the universe and be in- 
strumental in uniting all religions of the world and in 
bringing all hostile nations into peaceful relations by 
leading them to the way of perfect justice. 

SHOULD BLOT OUT RELIGIOUS OPPRES- 
SION. 

The Rt.-Rev. Archbishop Redwood of New Zea- 
land responded on behalf of his country as follows: 

I come to you from the newest civilizations of the 
Anglo-Saxon people. I represent Australasia, a coun- 
try divided into various colonies governing themselves 
with wonderful freedom, and making most rapid ad- 
vances in the art of civilization, I deem it a great 

Congress Qi Religions 4 



$0 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

honor to be allowed to be present to-day on such an 
occasion as this. It begins a new era for mankind of 
true brotherly love. It is a sad spectacle when the 
mind ranges over the whole universe to see that mul- 
titude of 12,000,000 of human beings, created by the 
same God, destined to the same happiness, and yet so 
divided by the various barriers of religious belief; to 
see that instead of living brotherly there are barriers 
of hatred. Now I believe an occasion like this is the 
strongest possible means of removing, I hope forever 
these barriers. [Great applause]. I stand here as the 
representative of that distant land and of that old 
church. As one of the holy fathers has said, the be- 
ginning of all things is a holy Catholic Church. There 
it stands as a landmark in history. There it stands 
as a monument to the brotherhood of man, that was 
never dreamed of by mere human agencies. Now we 
are brethren of God and we can walk the earth and 
can say truly we are children of one God. I hope as 
one of the fruits of this parliament that by the grace 
of God the idea of oppressing any man for his relig- 
ious belief will be blotted out forever. 

LOOKS FOR TOLERANCE AND GENTLENESS. 

H. Dharmapala of India was introduced and spoke 
as follows: 

I bring to you all the good wishes of 475,000,000 
Buddhists and the blessings and peace of the Shinto- 
ism, the religious founder of that great system who 
has made life easy and mild. I have traveled since 
May 18 to be able to attend this congress, and in that 
time have traveled more than 21,000 miles. When I 
read the program of this parliament of religion I saw 



FIRST WORDS 51 

it was simply the re-echo of the great consummation 
which the Indian Buddhists held twenty-one centuries 
ago in the great city of Backnoo. For seven months 
they held their great meetings and there were present 
1,000 scholars of India. The work of that congress 
was epitomized and carved on living rock, and it was 
scattered all over India. After the consummation of 
that program that great Emperor sent his minister, 
sent the mild disciples of Budda, and they went across 
the rivers, the Himalayas, and the plains of Mongolia 
to the Chinese plains and the far-off people, the isl- 
ands of the empire of the rising sun. To the influ- 
ence of that congress, held twenty-one centuries ago, 
can be traced that which is to-day a living power, be- 
cause wherever you go in Budda' s country to-day you 
will find love, compassion, tolerance. Go to Japan 
and what do you see? The noblest lesson of tolerance 
and gentleness. Go to Brahma and what do you see? 
The lesson of tolerance and mildness. 

I am sure we shall all take away from this place the 
thought that this is the grand work at the close of the 
nineteenth century. Then, friends, if you are serious, 
if you are altruistic, this program can be carried out, 
and the twentieth century will see the pages open up 
upon a new era of gentleness and kindness. 

RECESS FOR LUNCHEON. 

After taking a recess of an hour for luncheon the 
opening session reconvened at 2:30 P. M. , continuing 
until nearly 5 o'clock. The hall was nearly as well 
filled as at the morning session, many people being 
obliged to stand. Dr. Barrows, the Chairman, rapped 
for order and introduced Dr. Alfred Momerie of Lon- 
don. Dr. Momerie said; 



52 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

I feel and shall always feel the profoundest thanks 
to the President, Dr. Barrows, and all who have helped 
him in bringing about these great and glorious meet- 
ings. Of all the studies of the present day the most 
serious, interesting, and important is the study of 
comparative religion, and I believe that this object 
lesson, which it is the glory of America to have pro- 
vided for the world, will do far more than any private 
study in the seclusion of the student's own home. 
[Applause.] The reports of our proceedings, which 
will be telegraphed all over the world, will help men 
by thousands and hundreds of thousands to realize the 
truth of those grand old Bible words that God has 
never left himself without witness. [Applause.] It 
cannot be that the new commandment was inspired 
when uttered by Christ and was not inspired when ut- 
tered, as it was uttered, by Confucius and Hillial. 
The fact is, all religions are fundamentally more or 
less true and all religions are superficially more or 
less false. [Applause]. And I suspect that the creed 
of the universal religion, the religion of the future, 
will be summed up pretty much in the words of Ten- 
nyson — words which were quoted in that magnificent 
address which thrilled us this morning : "The whole 
world is everywhere bound by gold chains about the 
feet of God." [Applause.] 

EXILED BY THE SULTAN. 

Prof. Minas Tcheraz of London, a member of the 
Armenian Church, was introduced and said, in part: 

Salutations to the New World in the name of Ar- 
menia, the oldest country of the Old World. Saluta- 
tions to the American people in the name of Armenia, 



FIRST WORDS 53 

which has been twice the cradle of the human race. 
Salutations to the Parliament of Religions in the name 
of Armenia, where the religious feeling was first blos- 
somed in the enraptured heart of Adam. Salutations 
to every one of you, brothers and sisters, in the name 
of the Tigris and the Euphrates, which watered the 
Garden of Eden, in the name of the majestic Ararat 
which was crowned by the Ark of Noah, in the name of 
a church which has been almost contemporary with 
Christ. A pious thought animated Christopher Colum- 
bus when he directed the prow of his ship toward this 
land of his dreams; to convert the natives to the faith 
of the Roman Catholic Church; a still more pious 
thought animates you now, noble Americans, because 
you try to convert the whole of humanity to the dog- 
ma of universal toleration and fraternity. Old Arme- 
nia blesses this undertaking of young America, and 
wishes her to succeed in laying on the extinguished 
volcanoes of religious hatreds the foundation of the 
temple of peace and concord. At the beginning of our 
sittings allow the humble representative of the Arme- 
nian people to invoke the divine benediction on our 
labors in the language of his fellow-countrymen: 
Zkorzs tserats merots oogheegh ara i mez Der yevz- 
korzs tserats merots achoghia mez. 

IS A DEATH-KNELL TO PERSECUTION. 

Swami Vivekanda was next introduced. He said: 

It is my unspeakable joy to rise in response to the 
grand words of welcome given to us by you. I thank 
you in the name of the most ancient order of monks 
the world has ever seen. I thank you in the name of 
the mother religion of which Buddhism and Janism 



54 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

are but the branches. I thank you in the name of that 
ancient monastic order, and I thank you finally in the 
name of the millions and millions of the Hindoo peo- 
ple of all castes and sects. My thanks to some of the 
speakers on this platform who have told us that these 
men from the various nations will bear to the different 
lands the idea of toleration which they may see here. 
My thanks to them for this idea. 

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, 
fanaticism, have filled the earth with violence, drenched 
it often and often with human gore, destroyed civili- 
zation, and sent whole nations into despair. Had it 
not been for this horrible demon society would have 
been much farther advanced than it is. But its time 
has come and I fervently believe that the bell that 
tolled this morning in honor of the representatives of 
the different religions of the earth, in this parliament 
assembled, is the death-knell to all fanaticism [ap- 
plause], that it is the death-knell to all persecution 
with the sword or the pen, and to all uncharitable feel- 
ings between brethren wending their way to the same 
goal, but through different ways. [Applause.] 

CREEDS IN CANADA. 

The Dominion of Canada was represented by Prin- 
cipal Grant in these words: 

Religiously, in Canada we have accomplished a 
greater measure of unification than has been found 
possible in Great Britain or the United States. Eigh- 
teen years ago all the Presbyterian denominations 
united into one church, wide as the Dominion ; the 
four Methodist churches next united into one. And 
now the various Protestant churches are proposing a 



FIRST WORDS $$ 

wider union, and all the young Christian life of the 
country says amen to the proposal. It would be 
strange if a people brought up under such an environ- 
ment should fail to understand that where men differ 
they must be in error ; that truth is that which rights; 
that every age has problems of its own that must be 
solved, and that it is the glory of the human mind 
that it can at any state try to solve them; that no 
church has a monopoly of truth or of the Spirit of 
God, and that in no previous age or in no other land 
would it have been so hopeless to prove upon inves- 
tigation, to prevent comparison, or oppose the coming 
of the kingdom which consists not in meat or drink, 
nor in ritual or law, not in forms of the intellect or 
tradition, however venerable, but in righteousness, 
peace, and the Holy Spirit. 

Were the Apostle Paul here to day would he then ut- 
ter the same sad complaint with regard to the nine- 
teen centuries of Christendom? Why has not that 
kingdom fully come which John saw in the Apocalypse? 
Because the church has failed to understand the char- 
acter and purpose of its divine head and failed there- 
fore to do its work. We have divorced our religion 
from the moral and spiritual order of the universe in- 
stead of seeing that it interpenetrates, interprets, com- 
pletes, and rectifies that order. All day long the Sa- 
viour has been stretching out his hands to a disobedient 
and gainsaying people. That is why we have failed. 
But, brothers, the only indisputable condition of suc- 
cess is that we shall recognize the cause of failure, 
confess it humbly, and then courageously and for all 
time go and do otherwise. God give us the needed 
insight and faith. 



56 THE WORLD* S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

MISS SORABJI, A PARSEE. 

The Chairman then introduced a speaker from 
Bombay, India, of the Parsee faith, Miss Sorabji, 
who said: 

Dr. Barrows just told you I belonged to the order 
of Parsee. He is correct in one way, and not in an- 
other. My people were fire-worshipers but I am not 
now. I have been here for some time and I have asked 
the question over and over again, Where is religious 
America to be found, Christian America? To-day I see 
it all around me. I will give you a greeting from my 
country. When we meet one another in my land, the 
first thing we say to each other is, Peace be with you. 
I say it to you to-day in all sincerity, in all love. I feel 
to-day that the great banner over us is the banner of 
Jove. I would close with one little message from my 
countrywomen. The Christian women of my land said, 
Give the women of America our love and tell them 
that we love Jesus, and that we shall always pray that 
our countrywomen may do the same. Tell the women 
of America that we are fast being educated. We shall 
one day be able to stand by them and converse with 
them and be able to delight in all they delight in, and 
so I have a message from each one of my country wo- 
men. And once more I will just say that I haven't 
words enough in which to thank you for the welcome 
you have given to all those who have come here from 
the East. 

REPRESENTATIVE OF BRAHMA SAMAJ. 

Another citizen of Bombay, Mr. Nagarkar, said: 

I represent the Theistic movement in India, known 
in my native country as the religion of the Brahma 







MISS JEANNI SORABJI, 

Bombay, India ; daughter of a family of Parsees, or fire-worshippers 
of Bombay, India. 



FIRST WORDS 57 

Samaj. The fundamental principles of the Theistic 
Church in India are universal love, harmony of faiths, 
unity of prophets; or rather unity of prophets and har- 
mony of faiths. The reverence that we pay the other 
prophets and faiths is not mere lip loyalty, but it is the 
universal love for all the prophets and for all forms and 
shades of truth for their own sake which will fall at 
the feet of every prophet in the world, and not only 
try to learn in an intellectual way what these proph- 
ets have to teach, but to assimilate and imbibe these 
truths that are very near our spiritual being. We live 
in a spiritual atmosphere. Here in the Far West you 
have developed another phase of human life. You 
have studied outward nature. We in the East have 
studied the inner nature of man. Mr. Senn, more 
than twenty years ago, said, glory to the name of God 
in the name of the Parliament of Religions. Parlia- 
ment of Religions is exactly the expression that he 
used on that occasion in his exposition of the doctrine 
of the new dispensation, Church of India. It simply 
means the church of the Brahma Samaj, Church of In- 
dia, so that what I wish to express to you is that I 
feel a peculiar pleasure in being present here on this 
occasion. You have gone deep into the outward world 
and tried to discover the forces of outward nature, you 
have to teach to the East the glory of man's intellect, 
his logical accuracy, his rational nature, and in this 
way it is that in the heart of the church of the new 
dispensation, call it by whatever name you will, you 
will have the harmony of the East and the West, a 
union between faith and reason, a wedding between 

the Orient and the Occident. 



SPEAKS FOR JANISM. 
Birchand Raghavji being introduced said: 



58 THE world's congress of religions 

I come from India and I represent Janism, a faith 
older than Buddhism, similar to it, but different from 
it in its psychology, followed by a million and a half 
of Hindoos, law-abiding people. You have had many 
speeches, and as I will have to speak later in some 
detail I will therefore close by tendering on behalf of 
my country our sincere thanks for the welcome you 
have given us. I especially offer my congratulations 
and sincere thanks to Dr. Barrows and other mem- 
bers for having made for us nice arrangements for our 
lodging and boarding. 

ON BEHALF OF AFRICA. 

Bishop Arnett spoke on behalf of Africa as follows: 

Through the partiality of the Committee on Ar- 
rangements I am put in a peculiar position this after- 
noon. I am to respond to the address of welcome for 
Africa. I am to represent on the one side the Africans 
in Africa and the Africans in America. I am also by 
the Chairman announced to give color to this vast 
Parliament of Religions. I think the colored is in the 
majority this time. Africa has been welcomed, and it 
is so peculiar a thing for Africans to be welcomed that 
I congratulate myself that I have been welcomed here 
to-day. I am one of these that have not lost my faith 
in the possibilities of Africa. I know that every foot 
of land and every drop of water has been appropriated 
by the governments of Europe and every man's pos- 
sibility been locked up in their desire for gain, but 
yet I remember, in the light of history these same 
nations parceled out the American continent into 
pieces. America had her Jefferson; Africa in the 
- future will bring forth her Jefferson that will read the 
Declaration of Independence to Africans. We meet, 



FIRST WORDS 59 

you, sir, at this Parliament of Religions, the first gath- 
ering since Noah landed from the ark. 

It was nearly 5 o'clock when Bishop Arnett fin- 
ished speaking and the parliament was adjourned. 
Portions of the audience had begun to be surfeited 
with the feast of eloquence and had straggled out dur- 
ing the afternoon, but for the most part the hearers 
remained to the end, and many lingered to obtain 
closer views of the strangers from far away countries. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE MISSIONAIRES FROM AN ORIENTAL STANDPOINT 

FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 

Mr. Dharmapala of Ceylon opened the debate on 
foreign missions. He said: 

This question of foreign missions constitutes an im- 
portant problem that requires solution before the 
twentieth century dawns, and I ask you to give it your 
earnest and thoughtful consideration. The question 
is, How to evangelize non-Christian countries. The 
Buddhists have a record to show the Christian nations 
of three centuries ago did not do their duty as Christ 
wanted it done, and therefore Christianity failed in 
the East. The program that has been constructed, 
the platform you have built up must be entirely recon- 
structed if Christianity is to make progress in the East. 
You must send men full of unselfishness. They must 
not go as those missionaries of modern days go, but 
they must have a spirit of self-sacrifice, a spirit of 
charity, a spirit of tolerance, as well as the spirit of 
lowliness and meekness which characterized Jesus 
Christ. 

The conditions of our country are different to those 
of yours. Your great slaughter-house here is a shame 
and a curse to civilization, and we do not want any 
such Christianity in Ceylon, in Burmah, in japan, or 
in China. We want the lowly and meek and gentle 

60 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 6l 

teachings of Christ, not because we do not have them 
now, but we want more of them. I tell you if you 
want to make Christianity an influence in the East you 
must send there men of gentleness, lowliness, meek- 
ness, and tolerance. The missionaries sent to Ceylon, 
China, or Burmah, as a rule, have not got the toler- 
ance that we need. The missionary is intolerant; he 
is selfish. Why do not the natives mix with him? Be- 
cause he has not the tolerance and unselfishness he 
should have. Who are his converts? They are all 
men of low type. Seeing the selfishness and intoler- 
ance of the missionary not an intelligent man will ac- 
cept Christianity. 

Buddhism had its missionaries before Christianity 
was preached. It conquered all Asia and made the 
Mongolians mild. Its preachers do not go in this 
grand, fashionable costume of yours, but in the sim- 
ple garb you see upon this platform. They did not 
go with a Bible in one hand and a rum bottle in the 
other, but they went full of love and compassion and 
sympathy. With these attributes they conquered and 
they made Asia mild. Slaughter-houses were abol- 
ished, public houses were abolished, but they are now 
on the increase because of the influence of Western 
civilization. It is left to you, this younger family of 
European nations, to change this. 

RADICAL REFORM NEEDED. 

The sceond speaker was the Rev. George T. Cand- 
lin of Tientsin, West China, who wore the robes of 
a Chinese noble. He said: 

I fully indorse all the previous speakers have said 
as to the needs of radical reform m Christian missions. 



62 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

and as to the character of the Christian missionary that 
is required. But I take this one exception, that I do 
not indorse and I venture before this parliament to 
repudiate the personal remark made in regard to the 
missionaries of Ceylon, of India, and of Japan. In 
regard to that question I will only say I am no advo- 
cate for forcing our Western modes of life, our Western 
social customs, upon the East. Dr. Barrows has asked 
me to give you my belief as to the necessity for a rad- 
ical change in mission methods and what is likely to 
follow this great Chicago parliament. 

This parliament ought to result in this : The bring- 
ing about between Christian church and Christian 
church of different denominations the same relations 
of unity as now exist between member and member 
of the same church. We perhaps cannot get to the 
very end of Christian progress and reach the millen- 
nium with our hand within the measurable time, but 
I sincerely believe we can get this between the Chris- 
tian religion and non-Christian faiths — we can estab- 
lish such relation of mutual respect, toleration and 
love as now exist between Christian church and Chris- 
tian church. 

We have our gleams of light and every religious 
system existing on the earth to-day exists to bear wit- 
ness to some part of the truth which the rest of Chris- 
tendom has ignored or made light of. Now, I wanted 
to enlarge a little upon another subject. I am quite 
sure that this Chicago parliament will act in a thor- 
oughly missionary spirit. I am sure you will say this: 
that all we heard from our brethren of other faiths, 
while it leads us to sincerely, unstintedly, and joyously 
recognize the truth, the good, which entitles them to 
take their place as a part of the religious world, and 
as containing a part of the universal revelation of God, 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 63 

still it will commit itself unreservedly to the princi- 
ple that communication of the Christian ideas is of 
priceless value to the world. Don't you turn your back 
on Jesus Christ. The meaning of Christianity from a 
missionary point of view is an infinite desire to give 
and an infinite willingness to receive. Christianity 
has a great big supplement to it. It has a great big 
guest chamber, and it is capable of entertaining a 
great deal. It has got a "finally ' to its sermon for the 
world. And let me tell you what that "finally" is: 
Listen to it. He was a missionary, a very great mis- 
sionary, who told us the "finally" of Christianity. 
"Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are true, 
whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are 
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things 
are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there 
be any praise, think of these things." 

The Hindoo student, Narasema-Charyar of Madras, 
followed. He said: 

If success be the criterion by which to gauge an un- 
dertaking and if missionary success means the conver- 
sion of the Hindoos then it must be confessed that 
missionary work in India is a failure. Why does not 
Christianity in India spread faster? Why don't the 
natives adopt it in numbers? For this there are many 
reasons. Into the vexed questions as to the benefits 
the Hindoos have derived from English rule I shall 
not enter. I belong to that class of my countrymen 
who believe in having a little more bread to eat and 
a little less of the much-admired Western civilization. 
But there is another class, a love-in-a-cottage class, 
who believe in the efficacy of western civilization to 
feed half-starved millions, but be this as it may, the 
English advocacy of Christianity did not benefit it 



64 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

much, for with the conqueror's pride they cannot bring 
themselves down, or rather cannot bring themselves 
up to practice the humility which they preach. The 
religion which a conquering. nation with an exasperat- 
ing consciousness of superiority condescendingly offers 
to the conquered must ever be disgusting to the recip- 
ient, however good it may be. Again your missiona- 
ries, in their iconoclastic eagerness, attack some of 
our prejudices which are not necessarily un-Christian. 
Thus our intermingling with other castes is made a 
necessary article of faith of the converted Hindoo, and 
let me tell you from my own experience, that it is to 
us a physical repugnance. Eating w T ith the lower 
castes is a nauseating process to us; we cannot do it 
if we try. There is another custom of the Brahmins, 
far more deeply ingrained and far more difficult to up- 
root. I mean their prejudice against animal food. So 
long as Christians by tacit silence make people believe 
that the eating of animal food is a necessary prepara- 
tory course to be gone through before baptism, so 
long then will you find you have a stumbling block in 
the way of evangelization of India. 

I shall close this address with a few words as to 
how a Christian missionary ought to work. They com- 
plain that they cannot get a hearing — but suppose a 
hundred of your zealous young Christians and clad in 
the saffron robes of a humble mendicant, preach from 
house to house, singing the praise of him who died 
for love, do you think the people would refuse to hear 
them? At first they may be jeered, they may be rid- 
iculed, but did not the prophets endure similar trials? 
You may think I am advocating an impossible attempt. 
About two hundred years ago a poor Jesuit, Father 
Beschi by name, went about the country doing these 
very things, and he read before the King of Madura, 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 65 

a poem on the life of Christ, which, notwithstanding 
its forced style, compares favorably with Edwin Ar- 
nold's "Light of the World." To-day the much mis- 
understood Salvationists are doing the same. They 
are the stuff of which missionaries ought to be made. 
If these, my remarks, put you in the right track, if 
they give you some of our feeling, so that it will 
smooth your way for future efforts, I have not spoken 
in vain. 

VICTORIES OF MISSIONARIES. 

The. Rev. R. E. Hume of India said. 

It would be far pleasanter to my heart to tell some 
of the victories of missions than to attempt suggestions 
as to how we might do our work better if that were 
the subject which was assigned to me. I would tell 
my brother from Madras what he does not know. He 
tells the truth as he sees it, that in the City of Madras 
and in the university of which he is a graduate, the 
converts of the Christian faith take a higher stand 
than the Brahmins. I would tell him that in the de- 
cade from 1871 to 1881 the census of the British Gov. 
ernment, not missionary reports, says that when the 
population increased 6 per cent the Christian popula- 
tion increased 32 per cent. I would tell him that by 
the report not of missions but of the British Govern- 
ment census in the decade from 1881 to 1891, when 
the population of the country increased 10 per cent, 
the native Christian community increased 23 per cent, 
and if I ever have permission to tell the story of what 
the Director of Public Instruction in his own city has 
said — I have it in my pocket now, but it is not my 
subject — I would show how he prophecies that in a 

Congress of Religions 5 



66 the world's congress of religions 

generation all the positions of influence and of respon- 
sibility will be in the hands of the Christian commu- 
nity of India. 

We do make mistakes. We want to be better. We 
are willing to have our Buddist and our Brahmin 
friends tell us how we can be better. As the subject 
is "How We Might Do Our Work Better" I will say 
a few words on the relations of missionaries and non- 
Christians, and the first thing is, we might some of 
us know their thoughts better. We ought to study 
their books more deeply, more intelligently, more con- 
stantly. We ought to associate with them in order to 
know their inmost thoughts and their feelings and 
their aspirations better than we do. The second sug- 
gestion which I would make and which is at the ker- 
nel of this parliament is when we recognize truth we 
should more cordially and more gladly recognize it. 
And the third point which I would say is that there 
are phases of Christian truth and doctrine which are 
put before Orientals as essential to Christianity which 
I do not believe and which some of us do not believe 
are essential to Christianity. It is hard for a man to 
say that he is to give another message than that which 
seems to him truth, but I would have my brethren 
and sisters remember that even our Divine Master 
exercised a restraint in regard to what he believed to 
be true when he saw that men were not in a position 
to accept it, and I for my part believe that it is some 
times better to teach less than what you believe to be 
the whole truth when you have reason to know that 
the statements as you would put them, instead of 
bringing men to the essential Christ, to the heart of 
Christianity, drive them from it. 

Now the last word is this: These are the days when 
missionaries are criticised and I say hear both sides. 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 67 

Fair play is a jewel even for the missionary, and when 
he is criticised don't say it is all true, because some 
globe trotter has told you, or because some one has 
reported it in the newspaper, or even because our 
honored brethren tell what they see so far as they 
know, but let us humbly take those criticisms to our 
Master and benefit by them as we can, and for the rest 
may we say, if the Master praises what of men? 

QUOTES FROM THE KORAN. 

Dr. George E. Post of Beyrout, Syria, was the 
next speaker. As he stepped to the front of the plat- 
form he held aloft a thick volume in black covers 
from which he quoted extensively. The book was a 
copy of the Koran and Dr. Post's evident object in 
reading from it was to contrast the text with some 
of the utterances of Mohammed Webb. Dr. Post 
said: 

I hold in my hand a book which is never touched 
by 200,000,000 of the human race with unwashed 
hands, a book which is never carried below the waist, 
a book which is never laid upon the floor, a book 
every word of which to these 200,000,000 of the hu- 
man race is considered the direct Word of God which 
came down from heaven. And I propose without note 
or comment to read to you a few words from this sa- 
cred book, and you may make your own comments 
upon them afterwards. 

In Chapter 66 it is said, "O, prophet, attack the in- 
fidel with arms." And chapter 2 says: "And fight for 
the religion of God against those who fight against 
you and kill them wherever ye find them, and turn 
them out of that whereof they have dispossessed you, " 



68 THE world's congress of religions 

Also on page 25 it is written : "War is enjoined you 
against the infidels, but this is faithful unto you; yet 
perchance ye hate a thing which is better for you, and 
perchance ye love a thing which is worse for you." 
Chapter 48 : "Say unto the Arabs of the desert who 
are left behind, ye shall be called forth against a 
mighty and a warlike nation; ye shall fight against 
them or they shall profess Islam." And this may be 
translated: "Until they profess Islam." I read in 
chapter 4 of the Koran: "And if ye fear that ye shall 
net act with equity toward orphans of the female sex 
take in marriage of such other women as please you 
two, or three, or four, and not more." In the same 
chapter I read: "Ye may with your substance provide 
wives for yourselves." I read, however, that these 
were not sufficient provisions for the prophet and a 
special revelation had to be made from heaven in 
these words: "O, prophet, we have allowed thee thy 
wives, unto whom thou hast given thy dower, and also 
the slaves which thy right hand possesseth of the 
booty which God hath granted thee, and the two 
daughters of thy uncles and the daughters of thy aunts, 
both on thy father's side and thy mother's side, who 
have fled with thee from Mecca, and any other believ- 
ing woman, if she give herself unto the prophet in 
case the prophet desires to take her to wife. This is 
a particular privilege granted unto thee above the 
rest of the true believers." 

There is one chapter which I dare not stand before 
you, my sisters, and wives, and daughters, and read 
to you. I have not the face to read it; nor would I 
like to read it even in a congregation of men. It is 
the sixty-fourth chapter of the Koran. You may read 
that chapter if you like, yourselves, and you may read 
the comment of their great leaders and theologians, 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 69 

that of the man on whom they rely for the interpretation 
of the Koran. The chapter is called "Prohibition." 
If I were going to name it I should call it "High Li- 
cense. " 

The following passage was recorded on Mohammed's 
wives asking for more sumptuous clothes and addi- 
tional allowances for their expenses. The Prophet no 
sooner received the request than he gave them their 
option even to continue with him or be divorced. In 
this passage God is supposed to be the speaker. He 
says: "O Prophet, say unto thy wives, if ye seek this 
present life and the pomp thereof come, I will make 
a handsome provision for you, and I will dismiss you 
with an honorable dismission ; but if ye seek God 
and his apostle and the life to come, verily, God hath 
prepared for such of you as work righteousness a great 
reward." 

RESULTS IN JAPAN. 

The Rev. Mr. Haworth of Japan said: 

Being from Japan you will naturally expect me to 
speak of the particular phases of the missionary prob- 
lem which are more or less peculiar to that field. 
Those who heard the intresting paper of Prof. Kosaki 
Wednesday afternoon on this platform will be ready 
to believe that in Japan at least it is high time for 
missionaries to mend their ways or get out and let 
Brother Kosaki and his Christian countrymen work 
out their own salvation. If in the great problems before 
the church in Japan; the problem of reconciling Chris- 
tianity with the "National Spirit;" the problem of 
adjusting the relations between the missionaries and 
the Japanese Christians ; the problem of denomination- 
alism and church government; the problem of deter- 



70 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

mining what are the essential doctrines of Christianity 
and of written creeds; the problems which affect the 
very life and continuity of Christ's Church in Japan; 
if in these vital and perplexing questions the mission- 
aries can be of no service — as Mr. Kosaki says — if 
the Japanese must work out these difficult problems 
alone and are able to do it, the explanation of this 
strange situation must be either that the missionary 
has done his work so well that the pupil is now equal 
in all respects to the teacher, who might as well with- 
draw, or else the missionary has spent thirty-five years 
in grappling with the great problem of Christianizing 
Japan only to prove to himself in the end a colossal 
and preposterous failure. It is true the missionary 
has not the influence he once had in Japan and still 
has in most other fields. And this cannot be explained 
wholly on the ground of our success there. Japan is 
not evangelized to-day. With 40,000 baptized Chris- 
tians out of 40,000,000 people, with the rate of annual 
increase in the church diminishing rather than increas- 
ing, with all these unsolved problems pressing upon 
the infant church, let not Christian America listen for 
one moment to one who would say that our work for 
Japan is done. Now, why have we failed to maintain 
our place as leaders in Japan? I answer, Because we 
have sinned against the way of Christ's kingdom, the 
law of unity and co-operation. We have bewildered 
the Japanese by our thirty or more different missions 
operating on the same ground. We have got up a sort 
of Cherokee Strip for Japan. We have bewildered the 
believers and strengthened the unbelievers by the mul- 
tiplicity of organizations and specific doctrines. The 
time has come to study how all the forces of Christen- 
dom can be brought to bear in solid phalanx and har- 
monious action upon the enemy. The time has come 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 71 

when rivalries between different churches and missions 
should cease. Then shall the glory of the Lord be 
revealed, and that glory shall be ours to share with 
him. 

On this subject, Harai, the learned Japanese 
Buddhist raised a storm of sympathetic indignation. 
When he spoke, his voice trembled with the fervor 
of his feeling and the strange robes of his office were 
forgotten in the eloquence of his utterances. He is 
a priest of the Shinto sect, and he was speaking of 
"the real attitude of Japan towards Christianity." 

"Christianity was widely spread in Japan," he said, 
"when in 1837 the Christian missionaries, combined 
with their converts, cause a tragic and blood} 7 rebel- 
lion against the country. It was understood at the time 
that these missionaries intended to subjugate Japan to 
their own country. It was this which caused the pro- 
hibition of Christianity in Japan. Christianity had 
brought riot, bloodshed, and rebellion in its train. 
Verily, it had brought instead of peace a sword. The 
government was forced to drive out the Christian mis- 
sionaries in self-defense." 

Then the audience of 4,000 men and women — most 
of themselves Christian — rose to their feet and cried 
"Shame!" Shame upon the missionaries they them- 
selves had sent out. 

"I was the first, I confess, and confess it proudly," 
went on the fearless Japanese, "to organize a society 
in Japan against Christianity, but it was not against 
real Christianity; it was against the injustice we had 
received from the people of Christendom." 

It was like a voice out of darkness, a cry of op- 



72 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

pression from a strange land. It came to the thou- 
sands of Christians who listened as a thunder blast, 
and when the Shinto priest had finished the people 
rose again to their feet and gave him three mighty 
cheers. 

This was the sensation not only of the day but of 
the entire religious parliament. He said further: 

There are few countries in the world so misunder- 
stood as Japan. Among the innumerable unfair 
judgments the religious thought of my countrymen is 
especially misrepresented, and the whole nation is 
condemned as heathen. Be they heathen, pagan, or 
something else it is a fact that from the beginning of 
our history Japan has received all teaching with open 
mind, and also that the instructions which came from 
outside have commingled with the native religion in 
entire harmony, as is seen by so many temples built 
in the name of truth with a mixed appellation of Bud- 
dhism and Shintoism; as is seen by the affinity among 
the teachers of Confucianism and Taoism or other isms 
and the Buddhist and Shinto priest; as is seen by an 
individual Japanese who pays his or her respects to 
all teachings mentioned above; as is seen by the pe- 
culiar construction of the Japanese houses, which 
have generally two rooms, one for a miniature Bud- 
dhist temple and the other for a small Shinto shrine 
before which the family study the respective script- 
ures of the two religions; as is seen by the popular 
ode, which, translated, means: "Though there are many 
roads at the foot of the mountains, yet if the top is 
reached the same moon is seen." 

You send your missionaries to Japan and they ad- 
vise us to be moral and believe Christianity. We like 
to be moral, we know that Christianity is good, and 



FOREIGN MISSIONS DEBATED 73 

we are thankful for this kindness. But at the same 
time our people are rather perplexed and much in doubt 
about their advice. For when we think about the treaty 
stipulation in the time of feudalism when we were yet 
in our youth and know that it is still clung to by the 
powerful nation of Christendom; when legal cases are 
always decided by foreign authorities in Japan unfa- 
vorably to us, and when Americans march in proces- 
sion hoisting lanterns marked "The Jap Must Go;" 
when we are called "unintelligent heathen," because 
we hesitate to swallow the sweet and warm liquid of 
Christianity — well, if such be the Christian ethics we 
are perfectly satisfied to be heathen. 

If any religion teaches injustice to humanity I will 
oppose it, as I ever have opposed it, with my blood 
and soul. I will be the bitterest dissenter from Chris- 
tianity, or I will be the warmest admirer of its gos- 
pel. To the promoters of the parliament and the la- 
dies and gentlemen of the world who are assembled 
here I pronounce that your aim is the realization of 
the religious union, not nominally but practicably. 
We, the forty million souls of Japan, standing firmly 
and persistently upon the basis of international jus- 
tice, await still further manifestations as to the moral- 
ity of Christianity. 



CHAPTER III 
THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 

CONFUCIANISM 

In the summer of 1892, Dr. Barrows offered a 
prize of gold to that member of the flowery kingdom 
who should submit the best paper on the religion of 
that land. The offer of Dr. Barows was advertised 
in the press throughout all China and to Rung Hisen 
Ho, of Shanghai, the gold was given for the prize 
essay. The distinguished Mr. Pung Quang Yu of the 
Chinese legation, and who sat on the platform, nod- 
ded his approval at the frequent applause which 
greeted the statement of Confucianism as Mr. Pipe 
read the essay of Mr. Ho. The address was as 
follows: 

The most important thing in the superior man's 
learning is to fear disobeying heaven's will. There- 
fore in our Confucian religion the most important 
thing is to follow the will of heaven. The book of 
Yih King says : 'In the changes of the world there is 
the great Supreme which produces two principles, and 
these two principles are Yin and Yang. By Supreme 
is meant the spring of all activity. Our sages regard 
Yin and Yang and the five elements as acting and re- 
acting upon each other without ceasing, and this doc- 
trine is all important, like as the hinge of a door. 

74 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 75 

The incessant production of all things depends on 
this as the tree does on the root. Even all human 
affairs and all good are also dependent on it; there- 
fore it is called the Supreme just as we speak of the 
extreme points of the earth as the north and south 
poles. 

THE GREAT SUPREME. 

By Great Supreme is meant that there is nothing 
above it. But heaven is without sound or smell, 
therefore the ancients spoke of the Infinite and the 
Great Supreme. The Great Supreme producing Yin 
and Yang is law producing forces. When Yang and 
Yin unite they produce water, fire, wood, metal, earth. 
When these five forces operate in harmony the four 
seasons come to pass. The essences of the Infinite, 
of Yin and Yang, and of the five elements combine, 
and the heavenly become male and the earthly become 
female. When these powers act on each other all 
things are produced and reproduced and developed 
without end. 

As to man, he is the best and most intelligent of 
all. This is what is meant in the book of Chung Yong 
when it says that what heaven has given is the spir- 
itual nature. This nature is law. All men are thus 
born and have this law. Therefore it is Mencius says 
that all children love their parents and when grown up 
all respect their elder brethren. If men followed the 
natural bent of their nature then all would go the 
right way; hence the Chung Yong says: "To follow 
nature is the right way." 

THE FIVE RELATIONS. 

But what Confucians lay great stress on is human 
affairs. What are these? These are the five relations, 



76 THE world's congress of religions 

and the five Constants. What are the five relations? 
They are those of sovereign and minister, father and 
son, elder and younger brother, husband and wife, and 
that between friend and friend. Now the ruler is the 
son of heaven, to be honored above all others, there- 
fore in serving him there has to be loyalty. The par- 
ents' goodness to their children is boundless, like 
heaven's, therefore the parents should be served fil- 
ially. Brothers are branches from the same root, there- 
fore mutual respect is important. The marriage rela- 
tion is the origin of all human relations, therefore 
mutual gentleness is important. As to friends, though 
as if strangers to our homes, it is important to be very 
affectionate. 

When one desires to make progress in the practice 
of virtue as a ruler or minister, as parent or child, 
as elder or younger brother, or as husband and wife ; 
if any one wishes to be perfect in any relation, how 
can it be done without a friend to exhort one to good 
and check one in evil? Therefore one should seek to 
increase his friends. Among the five relations there 
are, also the three Bands. The ruler is the name of 
the minister, the father is that of the son, and the hus- 
band is that of the wife. And the book of the Ta 
Hsich says: "From the emperor down to the common 
people the fundamental thing for all to do is to culti- 
vate virtue." If this fundamental foundation is not 
laid then there cannot be order in the world. There- 
fore great responsibility lies on the leaders. This is 
what Confucius means when he says "When a ruler is 
upright he is obeyed without commands." 

IDEA of benevolence. 

The Chung Yung says : "Sincerity or reality is the 
beginning and end of things. There is no such thing 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 77 

as supreme sincerity without action. This is the use 
of faithfulness." 

As to benevolence, it also includes righteousness, 
religion, and wisdom; therefore the sages consider 
that the most important thing is to get benevolence, 
The idea of benevolence is gentleness and liberal- 
mindedness; that of righteousness is clear duty; that 
of religion is showing forth; that of wisdom is to 
gather silently. When there is gentleness, clear duty, 
showing forth, and silent gathering constantly going 
on, then everything naturally falls to its proper place, 
just like the four seasons — e. g., the spring influences 
are gentle and liberal and are life-giving ones; in sum- 
mer, life-giving things grow, in autumn these show 
themselves in harvest, and in winter they are stored 
up. If there were no spring the other three seasons 
would have nothing; so it is said the benevolent man 
is the life. Extend and develop this benevolence, 
and all under heaven may be benefited thereby. This 
is how to observe the human relations. 

As to the doctrine of human life, Confucianism 
speaks of it more minutely. Cheng Tsze says : "The 
spirits are the forces or servants of heaven and earth, 
and signs of creative power; speaking of one power 
the supreme and originating is called God, the re- 
verse and returning is Demon." 

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 

As to rewards and punishment the ancient sages also 
spoke of them. The great Yu, B. C. 2255, said: 
"Follow what is right and you will be fortunate ; do 
not follow it and you will be unfortunate. The results 
are only shadows and echoes of our acts. " Tang, B. 
C. 1766, said: "Heaven's way is to bless the good and 



78 THE world's congress of religions 

bring calamity on the evil." His minister, Yi Yin, 
said: "It is only God who is perfectly just; good ac- 
tions are blessed with a hundred favors, evil actions 
are cursed with a hundred evils." Confucius, speak- 
ing of the Book of Changes, Yih King said: "Those 
who multiply good deeds will have joys to overflowing; 
those who multiply evil deeds will have calamities 
running over." 

But this is very different from Taoism which says 
that there are angels from heaven examining into men's 
good and evil deeds, and from Buddhism which says 
that there is a purgatory, or hell, according to one's 
deeds. 

As to the great aim and broad basis of Confucianism, 
we say it searches into things, it extends knowledge, 
it has a sincere aim, i. e., to have a right heart, a vir- 
tuous life, so as to regulate the home, to govern the 
nation and give peace to all under heaven. 

When the first emperor of the Ming dynasty (A. D. 
1368-1644) arose, and reformed the religion and ritual 
of the empire, he called it the great peaceful dynasty. 
The pity was that he selected Buddhist priests to at- 
tend on the princes of the empire, and the priest Tao 
Yen corrupted the Hekin prince and a rebellious spirit 
sprung up which was a great mistake. Then Yen Tsung, 
too, employed Yen Sung, who only occupied himself 
in worship. Hi Tsung employed Ni Ngan, who de- 
famed the loyal and the good, and the dynasty failed. 
These are the evidence of the value of Confucianism 
in every age. 

But in our present dynasty worship and religion 
have been wisely regulated, and the government is in 
fine order, noble ministers and able officers have fol- 
lowed in succession down all these centuries. 

That is what has caused Confucianism to be trans- 



THE THREE GAEAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 79 

mitted from the oldest times till now, and why it 
constitutes its superiority to other religions is that it 
does not encourage mysteries and strange things or 
marvels. It is impartial and upright. It is a doctrine 
of great impartiality and strict uprightness, which one 
may bring forth in one's person and carry out with 
vigor in one's life. Therefore we say when the sun 
and moon come forth [as in Confucianism] then the 
light of candles can be dispensed with. 

BUDDHISM. 

"The World's Debt to Buddha," was the subject 
of a paper by H. Dharmapala, of Ceylon, who so in- 
terested the parliament by his papers and talks. The 
paper is as follows, opening with this quotation from 
Max Miiller: 

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind 
has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, 
has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems 
of life, and has found solutions of them which will de- 
serve the attention of those who have studied Plato 
and Kant, I should point to India. If I were to ask 
myself from what literature we here in Europe may 
draw that corrective which is most wanted in order 
to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehen- 
sive, more universal, and in fact more truly human a 
life, not for this life only, but for a transfigured and 
eternal life, again I should point to India." 

Ancient India twenty five centuries ago was the 
scene of a religious revolution, the greatest the world 
has ever seen. Indian society at that time had two 
large and distinguished religious foundations — the 
Szmanas and the Brahmanas. Famous teachers arose 
and, with their disciples, went among the people 
preaching and converting them to their respective 



80 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

views. Chief of them were Purana Kassapa, Makkhali, 
Ghosala, Ajita, Kesahambala, Pakudha Kacckagara, 
Sanjaya Belattiputta and Niganta Nathaputta. Amidst 
the galaxy of these bright luminaries there appeared 
other thinkers and philosophers who, though they ab- 
stained from a higher claim of religious reformers, yet 
appeared as scholars of independent thought. Such 
were Bavari, Pissa Mettayya, Mettagu, Punnaka, 
Dkotaka, Upasiva, Henaka, Todeyya, Sela Parukkha, 
Pokkharadsati, Maggadessakes, Maggajivins. These 
were all noted for their learning in their sacred scrip- 
tures, in grammar, history, philosophy, etc. 

The air was full of a coming spiritual struggle. 
Hundreds of the most scholarly young men of noble 
families [Eulaputta] were leaving their homes in quest 
of truth; ascetics were undergoing the severest morti- 
fications to discover the panacea for the evils of suffer- 
ing. Young dialecticians were wandering from place 
to place engaged in disputations, some advocating 
skepticism as the best weapon to fight against the rea- 
listic doctrines of the day, some a sort of life which was 
the nearest way to getting rid of existence, some de- 
nying a future life. It was a time deep and many sided in 
intellectual movements, which extended from the Cir- 
cles of Brahmanical thinkers far into the people at large. 

The sacrificial priest was powerful then as he is 
now. He was the mediator between God and man. 
Monotheism of the most crude type, fetichism from 
anthropomorphic deism to transcendental dualism was 
rampant. So was materialism from sensual epicurean- 
ism to transcendental Nihilism. In the words of Dr. 
Oldenberg: "When the dialectic skepticism began to 
attack moral ideas, when a painful longing for deliv- 
erance from the burden of being was met by the first 
signs of moral decay, Buddha appeared." 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHIMA 8l 

The Saviour of the World, 

Prince Siddhartha styled on Earth. 

In Earth on Heavens and Hells incomparable, 

All honered, Wisest, Best, most Pitiful, 

The teacher of Nirvana and the Law. 

Oriental scholars, who had begun their researches 
in the domain of Indian literature at the beginning of 
this century, were put to great perplexity of thought 
at the discovery of the existence of a religion called 
after Buddha in the Indian philosophical books, Sir 
William Jones, H. H. Wilson and Mr. Colbrooke were 
embarrassed in being unable to identify him. Dr. 
Marshman, in 1824, said that Buddha was the Egyp- 
tian Apis, and Sir William Jones solved the problem 
by saying that he was no other than the Scandinavian 
Woden. The barge of the early orientals was drifting 
into the sand banks of Sanscrit literature when in 
June, 1837, the whole of the obscure history of India 
and Buddhism was made clear by the disciphering of 
the rock-cut edicts of Asoka the Great in Garnar and 
Kapur-da-gini by that lamented archaeologist, James 
Pramsep, by the translation of the Pali Ceylon history 
into English by Turner, and by the discovery of Bud- 
dhist manuscripts in the temples of Mepal, Ceylon 
and other Buddhist countries. In 1844 the first ra- 
tional, scientific, and comprehensive account of the 
Buddhist religion was published by the eminent scholar, 
Eugene Purnouff. The key to the archives of this 
great religion was also presented to the thoughtful 
people of Europe by this great scholar. 

With due gratitude I mention the names of the schol- 
ars to whose labors the present increasing popularity 
of the Buddha religion is due: Spence, Hardy, Go- 
gerly, Turner, Professor Childers, Dr. Davids, Dr. 
Oldenberg, Max Muller, Professor Jansboll and others. 

Congress of Religions 6 



82 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Pali scholarship began with the labors of the late Dr. 
Childers and the western world is indebted to Dr. 
Davids, who is indefatigable in his labors in bringing 
the rich stores of hidden wisdom from the minds of 
Pali literature. To two agencies the present popularity 
of Buddhism is due — Sir Edwin Arnold's incomparable 
epic, "The Light of Asia," and the theosophical so- 
ciety. 

FINDS SCHOLARLY FAVOR. 

"The irresistible charm which influences the think- 
ing world to study Buddhism is the unparalleled life 
of its glorified founder. His teaching has found favor 
with everyone who has studied his history. His doc- 
trines are the embodiment of universal love. Not only 
our philologists, but even those who are prepossessed 
against his faith have ever found but words of praise, " 
says H. G. Blavatsky. "Nothing can be higher and 
purer than his social and moral code. " "That moral 
code," says Max Miiller, "taken by itself is one of the 
most perfect which the world has ever known." "The 
more I learn to know Buddha," says Professor Jans- 
boll, "the more I admire him." "We must," says 
Professor Barth, "set clearly before us the admirable 
figure which detaches itself from it, that finished 
model of calm and sweet majesty, of infinite tender- 
ness for all that breathes, and compassion for all that 
suffers, of perfect moral freedom and exemption from 
every prejudice. It was to save others that he who 
was one day to be Gautama disdained to tread sooner 
in the way of Nivana, and that he chose to become 
Buddha at the cost of countless numbers of supple- 
mentary existences." 

"The singular force, " says Professor Bloomfield, "of 
the great teacher's personality is unquestioned. The 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 83 

sweetness of his character and the majesty of his 
personality stand forth upon the background of India's 
religious history with a degree of vividness which is 
strongly enhanced by the absence of other religions 
of any great importance." And even Bartholemy St. 
Hilaire, misjudging Buddhism as he does, says: "I do 
not hesitate to say that there is not among the foun- 
ders of religions a figure either more pure or more 
touching than that of Buddha. He is the perfect model 
of all the virtues he preaches; his self-abnegation, 
his charity, his unalterable sweetness of disposition do 
not fail him for one instant." That poet of Buddhism 
— the sweet singer of the "Light of Asia," Sir Edwin 
Arnold, thus estimates the place of Buddhism and Bud- 
dha in history: "In point of age most other creeds are 
youthful compared with this venerable religion, which 
has in it the eternity of a universal hope, the immor- 
tality of a boundless love, an indestructible element 
of faith in the final good and the proudest assertion 
ever made of human freedom." 

QUALITIES OF BUDDHA. 

"Infinite is the wisdom of the Buddha. Boundless 
is the love of Buddha to all that live." So say the 
Buddhist scriptures. Buddha is called the Mahamah 
Karumika, which means the all merciful Lord who has 
compassion on all that live. To the human mind 
Buddha's wisdom and mercy is incomprehensible. 
The foremost and greatest of his disciples, the blessed 
Sariputta, even he has acknowledged that he could 
not gauge the Buddha's wisdom and mercy. 

Already the thinking minds of Europe and America 
have offered their tribute of admiration to his divine 
memory. Professor Huxley says : "Guatama got rid 



84 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

of even that shade of a shadow of permanent existence 
by a metaphysical tour de force of great interest to the 
student of philosophy, seeing that it supplies the want- 
ing half of Bishop Berkeley's well-known idealist ar- 
gument. It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety 
of Indian speculation that Guatama should have seen 
deeper than the greatest of modern idealists." 

The tendency of enlightened thought of the day, all 
the world over is not toward theology, but philosophy 
and psychology. The bark of theological dualism is 
drifting into danger. The fundamental principles of 
evolution and monism are being accepted by the 
thoughtful. The crude conceptions of anthropomor- 
phic deism are being relegated into the limbo of obliv- 
ion. Lip service of prayer is giving place to a life 
of altruism. Personal self-sacrifice is gaining the 
place of a vicarious sacrifice. History is repeating itself. 
Twenty-five centuries ago India witnessed an intellect- 
ual and religious revolution which culminated in the 
overthrow of monotheism and priestly selfishness, and 
the establishment of a synthetic religion. This was 
accomplished through Sakya Muni. To-day the Chris- 
tian world is going through the same process. 

THE PRECEPTS ANDMISSION OF BUDDHA. 

It is difficult to properly comprehend the system of 
Buddha by a spiritual study of its doctrines. And es- 
pecially by those who have been trained to think that 
there is no truth in other religions. When the scholar 
Vachcha, approaching Budda, demanded a complete 
elucidation of his doctrines, he said : "This doctrine 
is hard to see, hard to understand, solemn and sub- 
lime, not resting on dialectic, subtle, and perceived 
only by the wise. It is hard for you to learn who are 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 85 

of different views, different ideas of fitness, different 
choice, trained and taught in another school." 

As systematic study of Buddha's doctrine has not 
yet been made by the Western scholars, hence the con_ 
flicting opinions expressed by them at various times. 
The notion once held by the scholars that it is a sys- 
tem of materialism has been exploded. The positivists 
of France found in it a positivism. Buckner and his 
school of materialists thought it was a materialistic 
system. Agnostics found in Buddha an agnostic and 
Dr. Rhys Davids, the eminent Pali scholar, used to 
call him the "agnostic philosopher of India." Some 
scholars have found an expressed monotheism therein. 
Arthur Lillie, another student of Buddhism, thinks 
it a theistic system. Pessimists identify it with Schop_ 
enhaur's pessimism. The late Mr. Buckle identified 
it with the pantheism of India. Some have found in 
it a monoism, and the latest dictum is Professor Hux- 
ley's, that it is an idealism supplying "the wanting 
half of Bishop Buckley's well-known idealist argu- 
ment." Dr. Eikl says that "Buddhism is a system of 
vast magnitude, for it embraces all the various branches 
of science, which our Western nations have been long 
accustomed to divide for separate study. It embodies, 
in one living structure grand and peculiar views of 
physical science, refined and subtle theories on ab- 
stract metaphysics, an edifice of fanciful mysticism, a 
most elaborate and far-reaching system of practical 
morality, and, finally, a church organization as broad 
in its principles and as finely wrought in its most in- 
tricate network as any in the world. All this is, 
moreover, confined in such a manner that the essence 
and substance of the whole may be compressed into a 
few formulas and symbols plain and suggestive enough 
to be grasped by the most simple-minded ascetic, and 



86 THE world's congress of religions 

yet so full of philosophic depths as to provide rich 
food for years of meditation to the metaphysician, the 
poet, the mystic, and pleasant pasturage for the most 
fiery imagination of any poetical dreamer." 

SYSTEM OF PURE THOUGHT. 

In the religion of Buddha is found a comprehensive 
system of ethics, and a transcendental metaphysic em- 
bracing a sublime psychology. To the simple-minded 
it offers a code of morality, to the earnest student a 
system of pure thought. But the basis doctrine is the 
self-purification of man. 

Spiritual progress is impossible for him who does 
not lead a life of purity and compassion. The super- 
structure has to be built on the basis of a pure life. 
So long as one is fettered by selfishness, passion, preju- 
dice, fear, so long the doors of his higher nature are 
closed against the truth. The rays of the sunlight of 
truth enter the mind of him who is fearless to exam- 
ine truth, who is free from prejudice, who is not tied 
by the sensual passion, and who has reasoning facul- 
ties to think. One has to be an atheist in the sense 
employed by Max Miiller : 

There is an atheism which is not death ; there is an- 
other which is the very life blood of all true faith. It 
is the power of giving up what, in our best, our most 
honest moments, we know to be no longer true. It 
is the readiness to replace the less perfect, however 
dear, however sacred it may have been to us, by the 
more perfect, however much it may be detested as yet 
by the world. It is the true self -surrender, the true 
self-sacrifice, the truest trust in truth, the truest faith. 

Without that atheism no new religion, no reform, 
no reformation, no resuscitation would ever have been 
possible; without that atheism no new life is possi- 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 87 

ble for anyone of us. The strongest emp'hasis has been 
put by Buddha on the supreme importance of having 
an unprejudiced mind before we start on the road of 
investigation of truth. The least attachment of the 
mind to preconceived ideas is a positive hindrance to 
the acceptance of truth. Prejudice, passion, fear of 
expression of one's convictions and ignorance are the 
four biases that have to be sacrificed at the threshold. 
To be born as a human being is a glorious privilege. 
Man's dignity consists in his capability to reason and 
think and to live up to the highest ideal of pure life, 
of calm thought, of wisdom, without extraneous inter- 
ventions. Buddha says that man can enjoy in this life 
a glorious existence, a life of individual freedom, of 
fearlessness and compassionateness. This dignified 
ideal of manhood may be attained by the humblest, 
and this consummation raises him above wealth and 
royalty. "He that is compassionate and observes the 
law is my disciple." 

HUMAN BROTHERHOOD IS TAUGHT. 

Human brotherhood forms the fundamental teaching 
of Buddha — universal love and sympathy with all man- 
kind and with animal life. Everyone is enjoined to 
love all beings as a mother loves her only child and 
takes care of it even at the risk of her life. The real- 
ization of the ideal of brotherhood is obtained when 
the first stage of holiness is realized. The idea of 
separation is destroyed and the oneness of life is rec- 
ognize^. There is no pessimism in the teachings of 
Buddha, for he strictly enjoins on his holy disciples 
not even to suggest to others that life is not worth 
living. On the contrary, the usefulness of life is em- 
phasized for the sake of doing good to self and hu- 
manity. 



88 THE world's congress of religions 

From the fetich worshiping savage to the highest 
type of humanity man naturally yearns for something 
higher. And it is for this reason that Buddha incul- 
cated the necessity for self-reliance and independent 
thought. To guide humanity in the right path, a 
Tathagata (Messiah) appears from time to time. 

In the sense of a supreme Creator, Buddha says that 
there is no such being, accepting the doctrine of evo- 
lution as the only true one, with corollary, the law of 
cause and effect. He condemns the idea of a creator, 
but the supreme God of the Brahmins and minor Gods 
are accepted. But they are subject to the law of cause 
and effect. This supreme God is all love, all merci- 
ful, all gentle, and looks upon all beings with equa- 
nimity. Buddha teaches men to practice these four 
supreme virtues. But there is no difference between 
the perfect man and this supreme God of the present 
world. 

The teachings of the Buddha on evolution are clear 
and expansive. We are asked to look upon the cos- 
mos "as a continuous process unfolding itself in regu- 
lar order in obedience to natural laws. We see in it 
not a yawning chaos restrained by the constant inter- 
ference from without of a wise and beneficent external 
power, but a vast aggregate of original elements per- 
petually working out their own fresh redistribution in 
accordance with their own inherent energies. He 
regards the cosmos as "an almost infinite collection of 
material, animated by an almost infinite sum total of 
energy," which is called Akasa. I have used the above 
definition of evolution as given by Grant Allen in his 
"Life of Darwin," as it beautifully expresses the gener- 
alized idea of Buddhism. We do not postulate that 
man's evolution began from the protoplasmic stage; 
but we are asked not to speculate on the origin of 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 89 

life, on the origin of the law of cause and effect, etc. 
So far as this great law is concerned we say that it 
controls the phenomena of human life as well as those 
of external nature, the whole knowable universe forms 
one undivided whole. 

Buddha promulgated his system of philosophy after 
having studied all religions. And in the Brahma-jola 
sutta sixty-two creeds are discussed. In the Kalama, 
the sutta, Buddha says : 

Do not believe in what ye have heard. Do not be- 
lieve in traditions, because they have been handed 
down for many generations. Do not believe in any- 
thing because it is renowned and spoken of by many. 
Do not believe merely because the written statement 
of some old sage is produced. Do not believe in con- 
jectures. Do not belive in that as truth to which you 
have become attached by habit. Do not believe merely 
on the authority of your teachers and elders. Often 
observation and analysis, when the result agrees with 
reason is conducive to the good and gain of one and 
all. Accept and live up to it. 

To the ordinary householder, whose highest happi- 
ness consists in being wealthy here and in heaven 
hereafter, Buddha inculcated a simple code of moral- 
ity. The student of Buddha's religion from destroying 
life, lays aside the club and weapon. He is modest 
and full of pity. He is compassionate to all creatures 
that have life. He abstains from theft, and he passes 
his life in honesty and purity of heart. He lives a 
life of chastity and purity. He abstains from falsehood 
and injures not his fellow man by deceit. Putting away 
slander he abstains from calumny. He is a peace-maker, 
a speaker of words that make for peace. Whatever 
word is humane, pleasant to the ear, lovely, reaching 
to the heart, such are the words he speaks. He 
abstains from harsh language. He abstains from fool- 



90 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ish talk, he abstains from intoxicants and stupifying 
drugs. 

THE HIGHEST MORALITY. 

The advance student of the religion of Buddha, when 
he has faith in him, thinks "full of hindrances in 
household life is a path defiled by passion. Pure as 
the air is the life of him who has renounced all worldly 
things. How difficult it is for the man who dwells at 
home to live the higher life in all its fullness, in all 
its freedom. Let me then cut off my hair and beard, 
let me clothe myself in orange colored robes, let me 
go forth from a household life into the homeless 
state." Then before long, forsaking his portion of 
wealth, forsaking his circle of relatives, he cuts off his 
hair and beard, he clothes himself in the orange robes 
and he goes into the homeless state, and then he 
passes a life of self-restraint, according to the rules 
of the order of the blessed one. Uprightness is his 
object and he sees danger in the least of those things 
he should avoid. He encompasses himself with holi- 
ness, in word and deed. He sustains his life by means 
that are quite pure. Good is his conduct, guarded the 
door of his senses, mindful and self-possessed, he is 
altogether happy. 

The student of pure religion abstains from earning 
a livelihood by the practice of low and lying arts, 
viz., all divination, interpretation of dreams, palmistry, 
astrology, crystal prophesying, charms of all sorts. 
Buddha also says: 

Just as a mighty trumpeter makes himself heard in 
all the four directions without difficulty, even so of all 
things that have life, there is not one that the student 
passes by or leaves aside, but regards them all with 
mind set free and deep-felt pity, sympathy and equa- 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 91 

nimity. He lets his mind pervade the whole world 
with thoughts of love. 

REALIZATION OF THE UNSEEN. 

To realize the unseen is the goal of the student of 
Buddha's teachings, and such a one has to lead an 
absolutely pure life. Buddha says: 

Let him fulfill all righteousness, let him be devoted 
to that quietude of heart which springs from within, 
let him not drive back the ecstasy of contemplation, 
let him look through things, let him be much alone. 
Fulfill all righteousness for the the sake of the living, 
and for the sake of the blessed ones that are dead 
and gone. 

Thought transference, thought reading, clairordence, 
clairvoyance, projection of the sub-conscious self and 
all the higher branches of psychical science that first 
now engage the thoughtful attention of psychical re- 
searches are within the reach of him who fulfills all 
righteousness, who is devoted to solitude and to con- 
templation. 

Charity, observance of moral rules, purifying the 
mind, making others participate in the good work that 
one is doing, co-operating with others in doing good, 
nursing the sick, giving gifts to the deserving ones, 
hearing all that is good and beautiful, making others 
]earn the rules of morality, accepting the laws of cause 
and the effect, are the common apponage of all good 
men. 

Prohibited employments include slave dealing, sale 
of weapons of warfare, sale of poisons, sale of intox- 
icants, sale of flesh — all deemed the lowest of profes- 
sions. 

The five kinds of wealth are: Faith, pure life, re- 
ceptivity of the mind to all that is good and beautiful, 



92 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

liberality and wisdom. Those who possess these five 
kinds of wealth in their past incarnations are influ- 
enced by the teachings of Buddha. 

UNIVERSALISM OF BUDDHA* S TEACHINGS. 

Besides these, Buddha says in his universal pre- 
cepts: He who is faithful and leads the life of a house- 
holder, and possesses the following four (Dhammas) 
virtues: Truth, justice, firmness and liberality, such 
a one does not grieve when passing away. Pray ask 
other teachers and philosophers far and wide whether 
there is found anything greater than truth, self-re- 
straint, liberality and forbearance. 

The pupil should minister to his teacher; he should 
rise up in his presence, wait upon him, listen to all 
that he says with respectful attention, perform the 
duties necessary for his personal comfort and carefully 
attend to his instruction. The teacher should show 
affection for his pupil. He trains him in virtue and 
good manners, carefully instructs him, imparts to him 
a knowledge of the sciences and wisdoms of the an- 
cients, speaks well of him to relatives and guards him 
from danger. 

The honorable man ministers to his friends and rel- 
atives by presenting gifts, by courteous language, by 
promoting as his equals and by sharing with them his 
prosperity. They should watch over him when he has 
negligently exposed himself, guard his property when 
he is careless, assist him in difficulties, stand by him 
and help to provide for his family. 

The master should minister to the wants of his serv- 
ants, as dependents; he assigns them labor suitable 
to their strength, provides for their comfortable sup- 
port; he attends them in sickness, causes them to 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 93 

partake of any extraordinary delicacy he may obtain 
and makes them occasional presents. The servants 
should manifest their attachment to the master; they 
rise before him in the morning and retire later to rest, 
they do not purloin his property, do their work cheer- 
fully and actively and are respectful in their behavior 
toward him. 

RELIGIOUS TEACHERS AND LAWYERS. 

The religious teachers should manifest their kind 
feelings toward lawyers. They should dissuade them 
from vice, excite them to virtuous acts — being desir- 
ous of promoting the welfare of all. They should in- 
struct them in the things they had not previously 
learned, confirm them in the truths and point out to 
them the way to heaven. The lawyers should minister 
to the teachers by respectful attention manifested in 
their words, actions and thoughts: and by supplying 
them their temporal wants and by allowing them con- 
stant access to them. 

The wise, virtuous, prudent, intelligent, teachable, 
docile man will become eminent. The persevering, 
diligent man, unshaken in adversity and of inflexible 
determination, will become eminent. The well in- 
formed, friendly disposed, prudent speaking, gener- 
ous minded, self-controlled, self-possessed man, will 
become eminent. 

In this world generosity, mildness of speech, public 
spirit and courteous behavior are worthy of respect un- 
der all circumstances and will be valuable in all places. 
If these be not possessed the mother will receive 
neither honor nor support from the son, neither will 
the father receive respect nor honor. Buddha also 
says : 



94 THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Know that from time to time a Tathagata is born 
into the world, fully enlightened, blessed and worthy, 
abounding in wisdom and goodness, happy with knowl- 
edge of the world, unsurpassed as a guide to erring 
mortal, a teacher of Gods and men, a blessed Buddha. 
He, by himself, thoroughly understands and sees, as it 
were face to face, this universe, the world below with 
all its spirits and the worlds above, and all creatures, 
all religious teachers, Gods and men, and he then 
makes his knowledge known to others. The truth doth 
he proclaim, both in its letter and its spirit, lovely in 
its origin, lovely in its progress, lovely in its consum- 
mation ; the higher life doth he proclaim, in all its 
purity and in all its perfectness. 

ATTRIBUTES OF BUDDHA. 

i. He is absolutely free from all passions, commits 
no evil even in secrecy and is the embodiment of per- 
fection. He is above doing anything wrong. 

2. Self-introspection — by this has he reached the 
state of supreme enlightenment. 

3. By means of his divine eye he looks back to the 
remotest past and future. Knows the way of emancipa- 
tion, and is accomplished in the three great branches 
of divine knowledge, and has gained perfect wisdom. 
He is in possession of all psychic powers, always will- 
ing to listen, full of energy, wisdom and dhyana. 

4. He has realized eternal peace and walks in the 
perfect path of virtue. 

5. He knows three states of existence. 

6. He is incomparable in purity and holiness. 

7. He is teacher of gods and men. 

8. He exhorts gods and men at the proper time ac- 
cording to their individual temperaments. 

9. He is the supremely enlightened teacher and the 
perfect embodiment of all the virtues he teaches. 

The two characteristics of Buddha are wisdom and 
compassion. 

Buddha gave a warning to his followers when he 
said; 



THE THREE GREAT RELIGIONS OF CHINA 95 

He who is not generous, who is fond of sensuality, 
who is disturbed at heart, who is of uneven mind, who 
is not reflective, who is not of calm mind, who is dis- 
contented at heart, who has no control over his senses 
— such a disciple is far from me, though he is in body 
near me. 

The attainment of salvation is by the perception of 
self through charity, purity, self-sacrifice, self knowl- 
edge, dauntless energy, patience, truth, resolution, 
love and equanimity. The last words of Buddha were 
these: 

Be ye lamps unto yourselves; be ye a refuge to 
yourselves; betake yourself to an eternal voyage ; hold 
fast to the truth as a lamp; hold fast as a refuge to 
the truth ; look not for refuge to anyone beside your- 
selves. Learn ye, then, that knowledge which I have 
attained and have declared unto you and walk ye in it, 
practice and increase in order that the path of holiness 
may last and long endure for the blessing of many 
people, to the relief of the world, to the welfare, the 
blessing, the joy of Gods and men. 

TAOISM. 

Dr. Martin, President of Tung Wen College of 
Peking said of Taoism: 

There is a religion indigenous to China. It is Tao- 
ism, the third great religion of China. But as the 
Chinese say of their famous Book of Changes, that 
"it cannot be carried beyond the seas," we may say 
the same of Taoism — it has nothing that will bear trans- 
portation. Its founder, Lao Tsze, did indeed express 
some sublime truths in beautiful language; but he en- 
joined retirement from the world rather than persist- 
ent effort to improve mankind. His followers have 
become sadly degenerate; and not to speak of alchemy, 
which they continue to pursue, their religion has dwin- 



g6 THE world's congress of religions 

died into a compound of necromancy and exorcism. It 
is, however, very far from being dead. 

LATTER DAY TAOISM. 

It has at its head a pontiff who represents a hie- 
rarchy as old as the Christian era. From his palace 
on the Tunghn mountains of Kiongsi he exercises a 
serious sort of spiritual jurisdiction over everything 
in the empire, the tutelar deity of the city being by 
him selected from a list of dead Mondouins. He is 
supposed, moreover to be able to control all the bad 
spirits that molest mankind and the visitor is shown 
long rows of jars, each bearing the seal of the pontiff 
and an inscrpition indicating that some culprit spirit 
was there confined. Such is Taoism at the present day, 
and though it exercises a tremendous power over the 
minds of the superstitious, its doctrine and methods 
would hardly be deemed edifying in other parts of the 
world. 



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VIRCHAND A. GANDHI, 

lawyer of Bombay and one of the chief exponents of the 
Jain religion. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA 

HINDOOISM 

Dr. Jones introduced Virchand R. Ganthi, a bach 
elor of arts from an Indian college, who read a paper 
on "Hindooism," written by his fellow collegian 
Manual N. Doivedi, who was unable to attend the 
parliament in person. The paper was an exhaustive 
review and analysis of the Hindoo faith and system 
of philosophy. A synopsis of the views presented 
follows: 

Hindooism is a wide term, but at the same time a 
vague term. The word Hindoo is invented by the 
Mohammedan conquerors of Aryavata, the historical 
name of India, and it denotes all who reside beyond 
the Indus. Hindooism, therefore, correctly speaking, 
is no religion at all. It embraces within its wide in- 
tention all shades of thought, from the Atheistic 
Jainas and Bauddhas to the theistic Sampradavikas 
and Samajists and the rationalistic Advaitins. But 
we may agree to use the term in the sense of that 
body of philosophical and religious principles which 
are professed in part or whole by the inhabitants of 
mdia. I shall confine myself in this short address to 
unfolding the meaning of this term and shall try to 

97 

Congress of Religions 7 



98 the world's congress of religions 

show the connections of this meaning with the ancient 
records of India, the Vedas. 

RELIGION AT BOTTOM OF ETHICS. 

Before entering upon this task permit me, however, 
to make a few preliminary observations. Religion is 
defined by Webster generally as any system of worship. 
Religion divides itself into physics, ontology, and 
ethics, and, without being that vague something which 
is set up to satisfy the requirements of the emotional 
side of human nature, it resolves itself into that ra. 
tional demonstration of the universe which serves as 
the basis of a practical system of ethical rules. Every 
Indian religion, for let it be understood there is quite 
a number of them, has therefore some theory of the 
physical universe, complemented by some sort of spir- 
itual government, and a code of ethics consistent with 
that theory and that government. So then, it would 
be a mistake to take away any one phase of any In- 
dian religion and pronounce upon its merits on a par- 
tial survey. The next point I wish to clear is the 
chronology of the Puranas, I mean the chronology 
given in the Puranas. 

Whereas the Indian religion claims exorbitant antiq- 
uity for its teachings, the tendency of Christian writ- 
ers has been to cramp everything within the narrow 
period of 6,000 years. It behooves men of impartial 
judgment to look upon all religions as so many differ- 
ent explanations of the dealings of the Supreme with 
men of varying culture and nationality. 

We may now address ourselves to the subject before 
us. At least six different and well marked stages are 
visible in the history of Indian philosophic thought; 
and each stage appears to have left its impress upon 



THE RELIGIONS, OF INDIA 99 

the meaning of the word Hindooism. The six stages 
may be enumerated thus: The Veda; the Sutra; the 
Dars'ana; the Purana; the Samapradava; the Samaja. 
The spread of education set people to thinking and 
a spirit of "reformation" swayed the minds of all act- 
ive-minded men. The change worked was, however, 
no reformation at all. Under, the auspices of mater- 
ialistic science and education guided by materialistic 
principles the mass of superstition then known as 
Hindooism was scattered to the winds, and atheism 
and skepticism ruled supreme. But this state of 
things was not destined to endure in religious India. 
The revival of Sanscrit learning brought to light the 
immortal treasures of thought buried in the Vedas, 
Upanishads, Sutras, Dars'anas, and Puranas, and the 
true work of reformation commenced with the revival 
of Sanscrit. Several pledged their allegiance to their 
time-honored philosophy. But there remained many 
bright intellects given over to materialistic thought and 
civilization. These could not help thinking that the 
religion of those whose civilization they admired must 
be the only true religion. 

ATTRIBUTES OF HINDOOISM. 

Hindooism may in general be understood to con- 
note the following principal attributes: Belief in the 
existence of a spiritual principle in nature and in the 
principle of reincarnation. Observance of a complete 
tolerance and of the Samskaras; being in one of the 
Varnas and As'ramas, and being bound by the Hin- 
doo law. 

This is the general meaning of the term, but in its 
particular bearing it implies : Belonging to one of the 
Dars'anas, Samapradavas, or Panthas, or to one of the 
anti-Brahmanical schism. 



IOO THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OP RELIGIONS 

Having ascertained the general and particular scope 
and meaning of Hindooism, I would ask you, gentle- 
men of this august parliament, whether there is not 
in Hindooism material sufficient to allow of its being 
brought in contact with the other great religions of the 
world by bringing them all under one common genius? 
In other words, is it not possible to enunciate a few 
principles of universal religion which every man who 
professes to be religious must accept, apart from his 
being a Hindoo or a Buddhist, a Mohammedan, or a 
Parsee, a Christian or a Jew? If religion is not wholly 
that something which satisfies the cravings of the emo- 
tional nature of man, but is that rational demonstra- 
tion of the cosmos which shows at once the why and 
wherefore of existence, provides the external and all- 
embracing foundation of natural ethics, and by showing 
to humanity the highest ideal of happiness realizable, 
excites and shows the means of satisfying the 
emotional part of man; if, I say, religion is all this, 
all questions of particular religious professions and 
their comparative value must resolve themselves into 
simple problems workable with the help of unpreju- 
diced reason and intelligence. In other words, religion, 
instead of being a mere matter of faith, might well 
become the solid province of reason, and a science of 
religion may not be so much a dream as is imagined 
by persons pledged to certain conclusions. Holding, 
therefore, these views on the nature of religion, and 
having at heart the great benefit of a common basis 
of religion for all men, I would submit the following 
simple principles for your consideration: belief in the 
existence of an ultra-material principle iri nature, and 
in the unity of the all ; belief in reincarnation and sal- 
vation by action. 

These two principles of a possible universal re- 



THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA IOI 

ligion might stand or fall on the merits, apart from 
the consideration of any philosophy or revelation that 
upholds them. I have every confidence no philoso- 
phy would reject them, no science would gainsay them, 
no system of ethics would deny them, no religion 
which professes to be philosophic, scientific, and 
ethical ought to shrink back from them. In them I 
see the salvation of man, and the possibility of that 
universal love which the world is so much in need of 
at the present moment. 

The half hour rule by which all the essayists were 
strictly bound made it necessary for the scholarly 
Hindoo to skip large portions of his essay, but enough 
was presented to make reasonably clear the beauti- 
ful theories of the Eastern philosophers. 

Swami Vivekananda, of India, presented a paper on 
the Hindu faith, in which he said: 

Three religions now stand in the world which have 
come down to us from time prehistoric — Hinduism, 
Zoroastrianism and Indaism. These all have received 
tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their re- 
vival their internal strength, but Indaism failed to ab- 
sorb Christianity and was driven out of its place of 
birth by its all-conquering daughter. Sect after sect has 
arisen in India and seemed to shake the religion of the 
Vedas to its very foundations; but, like the waters of 
the seashore in a tremendous earthquake, it has re- 
ceded only for a while, only to return in an all-absorb- 
ing flood, and when the tumult of the rush was over 
these sects had been all sucked in, absorbed and as- 
similated in the immense body of another faith. 

From the high spiritual flights of philosophy, of 
which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, 



102 THE WORLD*S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

from the atheism of the Jains, to the low ideas of 
idolatry and the multifarious mythologies, each and 
all have a place in the Hindu's religion. 

Where then, the question arises, where then the 
common center to which all these widely-diverging 
radii converge? Where is the common basis upon 
which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? 
And this is the question which I shall attempt to 
answer. 

ABOUT THE VEDAS. 

The Hindus have received their religion through the 
revelation of the Vedas. They hold that the Vedas 
are without beginning and without end. It may sound 
ludicrous to this audience — how a book can be with- 
out beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books 
are meant. They mean the accumulated treasury of 
spiritual laws discovered by different persons in differ- 
ent times. Just as the law of gravitation existed be- 
fore its discovery and would exist if all humanity for- 
got it, so with the laws that govern the spiritual 
world; the moral, ethical and spiritual relations be- 
tween soul and soul and between individual spirits and 
the father of all spirits were there before their dis- 
covery and would remain even if we forgot them. 

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis and 
we honor them as perfected beings, and I am glad to 
tell this audience that some of the very best of them 
were women. 

Here it may be said that the laws as laws may be 
without end, but they must have had a beginning. The 
Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning or 
end. Science has proved to us that the sum total of 
the cosmic energy is the same throughout all time. 
Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where 



TtiE RELIGIONS OF INDIA I03 

was all this manifested energy? Some say it was in a 
potential form in God. But then God is sometimes 
potential and sometimes kinetic, which would make 
him mutable, and everything mutable is a compound, 
and everything compound must undergo that change 
which is called destruction. Therefore God would die. 
Therefore there never was a time when there was no 
creation. 

DEFINES EXISTENCE. 

Here I stand, and if I shut my eyes and try to con- 
ceive my existence, "I," "I," "I," what is the idea be- 
fore me? The idea of a body. Am I, then, nothing 
but a combination of matter and material substances? 
The Vedas declare, "No." I am a spirit living in a 
body. I am not the body. The body will die, but I 
will not die. Here am I in this body, and when it 
will fail, still I will go on living. Also I had a past. 
The soul was not created from nothing, for creation 
means a combination and that means a certain future 
dissolution. If, then, the soul was created, it must 
die. Therefore, it was not created. Some are born 
happy, enjoying perfect health, beautiful body, men- 
tal vigor, and with all wants supplied. Others are 
born miserable. Some are without hands or feet, some 
idiots, and only drag out a miserable existence. Why, 
if they are all created, why does a just and merciful 
God create one happy and the other unhappy? Why 
is he so partial? Nor would it mend matters in the 
least to hold that those who are miserable in this life 
will be perfect in a future life. Why should a man be 
miserable here in the reign of a just and merciful God? 

In the second place it does not give us any cause, 
but simply a cruel act of an all-powerful being, and 
therefore it is unscientific. There must have been 



104 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

causes, then, to make a man miserable or happy be- 
fore his birth, and those were his past actions. Why 
may not all the tendencies of the mind and body be 
answered for by inherited aptitude from parents? Here 
are the two parallel lines of existence — one that of the 
mind — the other that of matter. 

MENTAL HEREDITY. 

If matter and its transformation answer for all that 
we have, there is no necessity of supposing the exist- 
ence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought 
has been evolved out of matter. We cannot deny that 
bodies inherit certain tendencies, but those tendencies 
only mean the physical configuration through which a 
peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. Those 
peculiar tendencies in that soul have been caused by 
past actions. A soul with a certain tendency will take 
birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the 
display of that tendency, by the laws of affinity. And 
this is in perfect accord with science, for science 
wants to explain everything by habit, and habit is got 
through repetitions. So these repetitions are also 
necessary to explain the natural habits of a new-born 
soul. They were not got in this present life; there- 
fore, they must have come down from past lives. 

But there is another suggestion, taking all these 
for granted. How is it that 1 do not remember any- 
thing of my past life? This can be easily explained. 
I am now speaking English. It is not my mother 
tongue, in fact not a word of my mother tongue is 
present in my consciousness ; but, let me try to bring 
such words up, they rush into my consciousnesss. 
That shows that consciousness is the name only of the 
surface of the mental ocean, and within. its depths are 



THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA IO5 

stored up all our experiences. Try and struggle and 
they will come up and you will be conscious. 

RECALLING THE PAST. 

This is the direct and demonstrative evidence. 
Verification is the perfect proof of a theory, and here 
is the challenge, thrown to the world by Rishis. We 
have discovered precepts by which the very depths of 
the ocean of memory can be stirred up — follow them 
and you will get a complete reminiscence of your past 
life. 

So then the Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him 
the sword cannot pierce, him the fire cannot burn, him 
the water cannot melt, him the air cannot dry. He 
believes every soul is a circle whose circumference is 
nowhere, but whose center is located in a body, and 
death means the change of this center from body to 
body. Nor is the soul bound by the condition of mat- 
ter. In its very essence it is free, unbound, holy and 
pure and perfect. But somehow or other it has got 
itself bound down by matter, and thinks of itself as 
matter. 

Why should the free-perfect and pure being be under 
the thraldom of matter? How can the perfect be de- 
luded into the belief that he is imperfect? We have 
been told that the Hindus shirk the question and say 
that no such question can be there, and some thinkers 
want to answer it by the supposing of one or more 
quasi perfect beings, and use big scientific names to 
fill up the gap. But naming is not explaining. The 
question remains the same. How can the perfect be- 
come the quasi perfect ; how can the pure, the abso- 
lute, change even a microscopic particle of its nature? 
The Hindu is sincere. He does not want to take shel- 



io6 the world's congress of RELIGIONS 

ter under sophistry. He is brave enough to face the 
question in a manly fashion. And his answer is, "I 
do not know. " I do not know how the perfect being, 
the soul, came to think of itself as imperfect, as joined 
and conditioned by matter. But the fact is a fact for 
all that. It is a fact in everybody's consciousnes 
that he thinks of himself as the body. We do not at 
tempt to explain why I am in this body. 

SOUL IS ETERNAL. 

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immor- 
tal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change 
of center from one body to another. The present is 
determined by our past actions, and the future will be 
by the present. The soul will go on evolving up or 
reverting back from birth to birth and death to death 
— like a tiny boat in a tempest, raised one moment on 
the foaming crest of a billow and dashed down into a 
yawning chasm the next, rolling to and fro at the 
mercv of good and bad actions — a powerless, helpless 
wreck in an ever raging, ever rushing, uncompromis- 
ing current of cause and effect. A little moth placed 
under the whesl of causation which rolls on, crushing 
everything in its way, and waits not for the widow's 
tears or the orphan's cry. 

The heart sinks at the idea, yet this is the law of 
nature. Is there no hope? Is there no escape? The 
cry that went up from the bottom of the heart of de- 
spair reached the throne of mercy and words of hope 
and consolation came down and inspired a Vedic sage 
and he stood up before the world and in trumpet voice 
proclaimed the glad tidings to the world. "Hear, ye 
children of immortal bliss, even ye that resisted in 
higher spheres. I have found the ancient one, who 



THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA I67 

is beyond all darkness, all delusion, and knowing him 
alone you shall be saved from death again." "Chil- 
dren of immortal bliss," what a sweet, what a hopeful 
name. Allow me to call you, brethren, by that sweet 
name — heirs of immortal bliss — yea, the Hindu re- 
fuses to call you sinners. 

CHILDREN OF GOD. 

Ye are the children of God. The sharers of immor- 
tal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on 
earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a man so. It is a 
standing libel on human nature. Come up, live and 
shake off the delusion that you are sheep — you are souls 
immortal, spirits free and blest and eternal, ye are 
not matter, ye are not bodies. Matter is your servant, 
not you the servant of matter. 

Thus it is the Vedas proclaim, not a dreadful com- 
bination of unforgiving laws, not an endless prison of 
cause and effect, but that, at the head of all these 
laws, in and through every particle of matter and 
force, stands one "through whose command the wind 
blows, the fire burns, the clouds rain and death stalks 
upon the earth." And what is his nature? 

He is everywhere, the pure and formless one who 
reveals himself to the pure heart, and the pure and 
stainless man sees God, yea, even in this life, and then, 
and then only. All the crookedness of the heart is made 
straight. Then all doubt ceases. Man is no more the 
freak of a terrible law of causation. So this is the very 
center, the very vital conception of Hinduism. The 
Hindu does not want to live upon words and theories 
— if there are existences beyond the ordinary sensual 
existence, he wants to come face to face with them. If 
there is a soul in him which is not matter, if there is 



Io8 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

an all merciful universal soul, he will go to him di- 
rect. He must see him and that alone can destroy all 
doubts. So the best proof a Hindu sage gives, about 
the soul, about God, is, "I have seen the soul, I have 
seen God. " 

And that is the only condition of perfection. The 
Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and at- 
tempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in 
realizing — not in believing, but in being and becom- 
ing. 

RELIGION OF HINDUS. 

The whole struggle in their system is a constant 
struggle to become perfect, to become divine, to reach 
God and see God, and in this reaching God, seeing 
God, becoming perfect, even as the father in heaven is 
perfect, consists the religion of the Hindus. 

And what becomes of man when he becomes perfect? 
He lives a life of bliss, infinite. He enjoys infinite 
and perfect bliss, having obtained the only thing in 
which man ought to have pleasure — God, and enjoys 
the bliss with God. 

So far all the Hindus are agreed. This is the com- 
mon religion of all the sects of India, but then the 
question comes — perfection is absolute, and the abso- 
lute cannot be two or three. It cannot have any quali- 
ties. It cannot be an individual. And so when a soul 
becomes perfect and absolute, it must become one with 
the Brahman, and he would only realize the Lord as 
the perfection, the reality, of his own nature and ex- 
istence — existence absolute: knowledge absolute, and 
life absolute. We have often and often read about 
this being called the losing of individuality as in be- 
coming a stock or a stone. "He jests at scars that 
never felt a wound." 



THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA IOQ, 

I tell you it is nothing of the kind. If it is happi- 
ness to enjoy the consciousness of this small body, 
it must be more happiness to enjoy the consciousness 
of two bodies, or three, four, five — and the ultimate of 
happiness would be reached when it would become a 
universal consciousness. 

INFINITE INDIVIDUALITY. 

Therefore, to gain this infinite, universal individual- 
ity, this miserable little individuality must go. Then 
alone can death cease, when I am one with life. Then 
alone can misery cease, when I am with happiness 
itself. Then alone can all errors cease when I am one 
with knowledge itself. And this is the necessary scien- 
tific conclusion. Science has proved to me that physi- 
cal individuality is a delusion, that really my body is 
one little, continuously changing body in an unbroken 
ocean of matter, and the Adwaitam is the necessary 
conclusion with my other counterpart, mind. 

Science is nothing but the finding of unity, and as 
soon as any science can reach the perfect unity it will 
stop from further progress, because it will then have 
reached the goal. Thus, chemistry cannot progress 
farther when it shall have discovered one element out 
of which all others could be made. Physics will stop 
when it shall be able to discover one energy of which 
all others are but manifestations. The science of relig- 
ion will become perfect when it discovers Him who 
is the one life in a universe of death, who is the con- 
stant basis of an ever changing world, who is the only 
soul of which all souls are but manifestations. Thus 
through multiplicity and duality the ultimate unity 
is reached, and religion can go no further. This is 
the goal of all — again and again, science after science, 
again and again. 



IIO THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

And all science is bound to come to this conclusion 
in the long run. Manifestation and not creation is the 
word of science of to-day, and the Hindu is only glad 
that what he has cherished in his bosom for ages is 
going to be taught in more forcible language and with, 
further light by latest conclusions of science. 



CHAPTER V 
RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 

PECULIAR BELIEF AND CEREMONIES OF THE FOLLOWERS 
OF ZOROASTER 

Jinanji Jamshodji said: 

The greatest good that a Parliament of Religions, 
like the present can do is to establish what Professor 
Max Miiller calls "that great golden dawn of truth, 
'that there is a religion behind all religions.'" The 
learned professor very rightly says that "Happy is the 
man who knows that truth in these days of materialism 
and atheism." If this parliament of Religions does 
nothing else but spread the knowledge of this golden 
truth, and thus make a large number of men happy, 
it will immortalize its name. The object of my paper 
is to take a little part in the noble efforts of this great 
gathering, to spread the knowledge of that golden 
truth from a Parsee point of view. The Parsees of 
India are the followers of Zoroastrianism, of the relig- 
ion of Zoroaster, a religion which was for centuries 
both the state religion and the national religion of 
ancient Persia. As Professor Max Muller says: 

There were periods in the history of the world when 
the worship of Ormuzd threatened to rise triumphant 
on the ruins of the temples of all other gods. If the 
battles of Marathon and Salamis had been lost and 
Greece had succumbed to Persia, the state religion of 

Ul 



112 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

the empire of Cyrus, which was the worship of Ormuzd, 
might have become the religion of the whole civilized 
world. Persia had absorbed the Assyrian and Baby- 
lonian Empires; Jews were either in Persian captivity 
or under Persian sway at home; the sacred monuments 
of Egypt had been mutilated by the hands of Persian 
soldiers. The edicts of the king — the king of kings — 
were sent to India, to Greece, to Scythia and to 
Egypt, and if "by the grace of Ahura Mazda" Darius 
had crushed the liberty of Greece, the purer faith of 
Zoroaster might easily have superseded the Olympian 
fables. 

With the overthrow of the Persian monarchy under 
its last Sassanian king, Yazdagard, at the battle of 
Nehavand in A. D. 642, the religion received a check 
at the hands of the Arabs, who, with sword in one 
hand and Koran in the other, made the religion 
of Islam both the state religion and national re- 
ligion of the country. But man) 7 of those who 
adhered to the faith of their fathers quitted their 
ancient fatherland for the hospitable shores of India. 
The modern Parsees of India are the descendants of 
those early settlers. As a former governor of Bombay 
said, "Their position is unique — a handful of persons 
among the teeming millions of India, and yet who 
not only have preserved their ancient race with the 
utmost purity, but also their religion absolutely un- 
impaired by contact with others." 

DEAF TO APPEALS OF CHRISTIANS. 

In the words of Rt. Rev. Dr. Meurin, the learned 
Bishop (Vicar Apostolic) of Bombay, in 1885, the 
Parsees are "a people who have chosen to relinquish 
their venerable ancestors' homesteads rather than aban- 
don their ancient religion, the founder of which lived 
no less than 3, 000 years ago— a people who for a thou- 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 113 

sand years have formed in the midst of the great Hin- 
doo people, not unlike an island in the sea, a quite 
separate and distinct nation, peculiar and remarkable 
as for its race, so for its religious and social life and 
customs." Professor Max Miiller says of the religion 
of the Parsees: 

Though every religion is of real and vital interest in 
its earliest state only, yet its later development, too, 
with all its misunderstandings, faults and corruptions, 
offers many an instructive lesson to the thoughtful 
student of history. Here is a religion, one of the most 
ancient of the world, once the state religion of this 
most powerful empire, driven away from its native soil, 
and deprived of political influence, without even the 
prestige of a powerful or enlightened priesthood, 
and yet professed by a handful of exiles — men of 
wealth, intelligence, and moral worth in Western In- 
dia — with unhesitating fervor such as is seldom to be 
found in larger religious communities. It is well worth 
the earnest endeavor of the philosopher and the di- 
vine to discover, if possible, the spell by which this 
apparently effete religion continues to command the 
attachment of the enlightened Parsees of India and 
makes them turn a deaf ear to the allurements of the 
Brahmanic worship, and the earnest appeals of Chris- 
tian missionaries. 

IS A MONOTHEISTIC RELIGION. 

Zoroastrianism or Parseeism — by whatever name the 
system may be called — is a montheistic form of relig- 
ion. It believes in the existence of one God, whom 
it knows under the names of Mazda, Ahura and Ahura- 
Mazda, the last form being one that is most commonly 
met with in the later writings of the Avesta. The 
first and the greatest truth that dawns upon the mind 
of a Zoroastrian is that the great and the infinite uni- 
verse, of which he is an infinitesimally small part 

Congress of Religions 8 



114 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

is the work of a powerful hand — the result of a master 
mind. The first and the greatest conception of that 
master mind, Ahura-Mazda, is that, as the name im- 
plies, he is the Omniscient Lord, and as such he is the 
ruler of both the material and immaterial world, the 
corporeal and the incorporeal world, the visible and 
the invisible world. The regular movements of the 
sun and the stars, the periodical waxing and waning 
of the moon, the regular way in which the sun and 
the clouds are sustained, the regular flow of waters 
and the gradual growth of vegetation, the rapid move- 
ments of the winds and the regular succession of light 
and darkness, of day and night, with their accompani- 
ments of sleep and wakefulness, all these grand and 
striking phenomena of nature point to and bear ample 
evidence of the existence of an almighty power who 
is not only the creator, but the preserver of this great 
universe, who has not only launched that universe into 
existence with a premeditated plan of completeness, 
but who, with the controlling hand of a father, preserves 
by certain fixed laws harmony and order here, there 
and everywhere. 

As Ahura-Mazda is the ruler of the Physical World, 
so He is the ruler of the Spiritual World. His distin- 
guished attributes are good mind, righteousness, de- 
sirable control, piety, perfection and immortality. 
He is the Beneficent Spirit from whom emanates all 
good and all piety. He looks into the hearts of men 
and sees how much of the good and of the piety that 
have emanated from him has made its home there, 
and thus rewards the virtuous and punishes the vi- 
cious. Of course, one sees at times, in the plane of 
this world, moral disorders and want of harmony, but 
then the present state is only a part, and that a very 
small part, of His scheme of moral government. As 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 115 

the ruler of the world, Ahura-Mazda hears the prayers 
of the ruled. He grants the prayers of those who are 
pious in thoughts, pious in words and pious in deeds. 
"He not only rewards the good, but punishes the 
wicked. All that is created, good or evil, fortune 
or misfortune, is his work. 

■ PHILOSOPHY OF ZOROASTRIAN RELIGION. 

We have seen that Ahura-Mazda, or God is, accord- 
ing to Parsee Scriptures, the causer of all causes. He 
is the creator as well as the destroyer, the increaser 
as well as the decreaser. He gives birth to the differ- 
ent creatures and it is he who brings about their end. 
How is it, then, that he brings about these two con- 
trary results? In the words of Dr. Haug : 

Having arrived at the grand idea of the unity and 
indivisibility of the Supreme Being, he (Zoroaster) 
undertook to solve the great problem which has en- 
gaged the attention of so many wise men of antiquity 
and even of modern times, viz., How are the imper- 
fections discoverable in the world, the various kinds 
of evils, wickedness and baseness, compatible with the 
goodness, holiness and justice of God? This great 
thinker of remote antiquity solved this difficult ques- 
tion philosophically by the supposition of two primeval 
causes, which though different, were united and pro- 
duced the world of material things, as well as that of 
the spirit. 

These two primeval causes or principles are called 
in the Avesta the two "Mainyus. " This word comes 
from the ancient Aryan root "man," to "think," It 
may be properly rendered into English by the word 
"spirit," meaning "that which can only be conceived 
by the mind but not felt by the senses?" Of these 
two spirits or primeval causes or principles one is 
creative and the other destructive. These two spirits 



Il6 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

work under the Almighty day and night. They create 
and destroy, and this they have done ever since the 
world was created. According to Zoroaster's philoso- 
phy our world is the work of these two hostile princi- 
ples, Spenta-mainyush, the good principle, and 
Angro-mainyush, the evil principle, both serving 
under one God. In the words of that learned 
orientalist, Professor Darmestetter, "all that is good 
in the world comes from the former; all that is bad 
in it comes from the latter. The history of the world 
is the history of their conflict; how Angro-mainyu in- 
vaded the world of Ahura-Mazda and marred it, and 
how he shall be expelled from it at last. Man is ac- 
tive in the conflict, his duty in it being laid before 
him in the law revealed by Ahura-Mazda to Zarathush- 
tra. When the appointed time is come * * * An- 
gro-mainyu and hell will be destroyed, men will rise 
from the dead and everlasting happiness will reign 
over the world." 

ZOROASTER DID NOT PREACH DUALISM. 

These philosophical notions have led some learned 
men to misunderstand Zoroastrian theology. Some 
authors entertain an opinion that Zoroaster preached 
Dualism. But this is a serious misconception. In 
the Parsee scriptures the names of God are Mazda, 
Ahura and Ahura-Mazda, the last word being a com- 
pound of the first two. The first two words are com- 
mon in the earliest writings of the Gatha and the third 
in the later scriptures. In later times the word Ahura- 
Mazda, instead of being restricted, like Mazda, the 
name of God began to be used in a wider sense and 
was applied to Spenta-mainyush, the Creative or the 
Good principle. This being the case, wherever the 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OJ THE PARSEES 117 

word Ahura-Mazda was used in opposition to that of 
Angro-mainyush, later authors took it as the name of 
God, and not as the name of the Creative principle, 
which it really was. Thus the very fact of Ahura- 
Mazda's name being employed in opposition to that 
of Angrn-mainyush or Ahriman led to the notion that 
Zoroastrian scriptures preached dualism. 

Not only is the charge of dualism as leveled against 
Zoroastrianism, and as ordinferily understood, ground- 
less, but there is a close resemblance between the 
ideas of the Devil among the Christians and those of 
the Ahriman among the Zoroastrians. Dr. Haug says 
the same thing in the following words: . 

The Zoroastrian idea of the Devil and the inferna 
kingdom coincides entirely with the Christian doc- 
trine. The Devil is a murderer and father of lies ac- 
cording to both the Bible and the Zend Avesta. 

TWO PRINCIPLES GOVERN THE" WORLD. 

Thus we see that, according to Zoroaster's philoso- 
phy, there are two primeval principles that produce 
our material world. Consequently, though the Al- 
mighty is the creator of all, a part of the creation is 
said to be created by the good principle and apart by 
the evil principle. Thus, for example, the heavenly 
bodies, the earth, water, fire, horses, dogs and such 
other objects are the creation of the Good Principle, 
and serpents, ants, locusts, etc., are the creation of 
the Evil Principle. In short, those things that con- 
duce to the greatest good of the greatest number of 
mankind fall under the category of the creations of 
the Good Principle, and those that lead to the con- 
trary result, under that of the creations of the Evil 
Principle. This being the case, it is incumbent upon 
men to do actions that would support the cause of the 



Il8 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Good Principle and destroy that of the Evil One. 
Therefore, the cultivation of the soil, the rearing 
of domestic animals, etc., on the one hand and the 
destruction of wild animals and other noxious creat- 
ures on the other are considered meritorious actions 
by the Parsees. 

As there are two primeval principles under Ahura- 
Mazda that produce our material world, so there are two 
principles inherent in the nature of man which encour- 
age him to do good or tempt him to do evil. One 
asks him to support the cause of the good principle, 
the other to support that of the evil principle. The 
first is known by the name of Vohumana or Behemana, 
i. e., "good mind." The prefix "vohu" or "beh" is the 
same word as that of which our English "better" is 
the comparative. Mana is the same as the word 
"maniyu" and means mind or spirit. The second is 
known by the name of Akamana, i. e, bad mind. The 
prefix "aka" means "bad" and is the same as our Eng- 
lish word "ache" in "headache." 

MOTTO OF ZOROASTRIAN RELIGION. 

Now the fifth chapter of the Vendidad gives, as it 
were, a short definition of what is morality or piety. 
There, first 01 all, the writer says: "Purity is the best 
thing for man after birth." This you may say is the 
motto of the Zoroastrian religion. Therefore M. 
Harlez, very properly says that, according to Zoroas- 
trian scriptures, the" notion of the word virtue sums 
itself up in that of the 'Asha. ,M This word is the 
same as the Sanscrit "rita," which word corresponds 
to our English "right." It means therefore righteous- 
ness, piety or purity. Then the writer proceeds to 
give a short definition of piety. It says that "the pres- 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 119 

ervation of good thoughts, good words and good deeds 
is piety." In these pithy words is summed up, so to 
say, the whole of the moral philosophy of the Zoroas- 
trian scriptures. It says that, if you want to lead a 
pious and moral life and thus to show a clean bill of 
spiritual health to the angel, Meher Dayer, who 
watches the gates of heaven at the Chinvat bridge, 
practice these three: Think of no thing but the truth, 
speak nothing but the truth and do nothing but what 
is proper. In short, what Zoroastrian moral philoso- 
phy teaches is this, that your good thoughts, good 
deeds and good words alone will be your intercessors. 
Nothing more will be wanted. They alone will serve 
you as a safe pilot to the harbor of heaven, as a safe 
guide to the gates of paradise. The late Dr. Haug 
rightly observed that "the moral philosophy of Zoro- 
aster was moving in the triad of thought, word and 
deed." These three words form, as it were, the pivot 
upon which the moral structure of Zoroastrianism 
turns. It is the ground work upon which the whole 
edifice of Zoroastrian morality rests. 

MORAL CODE OF ZOROASTER. 

The following dialogue in the Pehelvi Padnameh of 
Buzurge-Meher shows in a succinct form what weight 
is attached to these three pithy words in the moral 
code of the Zoroastrians: 

Question — Who is the most fortunate man in the 
world? 

Answer — He who is the most innocent. 

Question — Who is the most innocent man in the 
world? 

Answer — He who walks in the path of God and shuns 
that of the devil. 



120 



Question — Which is the path of God, and which that 
of the devil? 

Answer — Virtue is the path of God, and vice that 
of the devil. 

Question — What constitutes virtue, and what vice? 

Answer — (Humata, hukhta, and hvarshta) good 
thoughts, good words and good deeds constitute vir- 
tue, and (dushmata, duzukhta and duzvarshta)- evil 
thoughts, evil words and evil deeds constitute vice. 

Question — What constitute (humata, hukhta and 
hvarshta) good thoughts, good words and good deeds, 
and (dushmata, duzukhta and duzvarshta) evil thoughts 
evil words and evil deeds? 

Answer — Honesty, charity and truthfulness consti- 
tute the former, and dishonesty, want of charity and 
falsehood constitute the latter. 

From this dialogue it will be seen that a man who 
acquires (humata, hukhta and hvarshta) good thoughts, 
good words and good deeds, and thereby practices 
honesty, charity and truthfulness, is considered to 
walk in the path of God, and therefore to be the most 
innocent and fortunate man. 

Herodotus also refers to the third cardinal virtue 
of truthfulness mentioned above. He says that to speak 
the truth was one of the three things taught to a 
Zoroastrian of his time from his very childhood. 

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 

Zoroastrianism believes in the immortality of the 
soul. The Avesta writings of Hadokht Nushk and the 
nineteenth chapter of the Vendidad and of the Peheivi 
books of Minokherad and Viraf-nameh treat of the fate 
of the soul after death. Its notions about heaven and 
hell correspond to some extent to the Christian no- 
tions about them. A plant called the Homa-i-saphid, 
or white Homa, a name corresponding* to the Indian 
Soma of the Hindus, is held to be the emblem of the 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 121 

immortality of the soul. According to Dr. Windisch- 
mann and Professor Max Miiller this plant reminds 
us of the "Tree of Life" in the Garden of Eden. As 
in the Christian scriptures the way to the tree of life 
is strictly guarded by the Cherubim, so in the Zoro- 
astrian scriptures the Homa-i-saphid, or the plant 
which is the emblem of immortality, is guarded by 
innumerable Fravashis — that is, guardian spirits. The 
number of these guardian spirits as given in various 
books is 99,999. 

Again, Zoroastrianism believes in heaven and hell. 
Heaven is called Vahishta-ahu in the Avesta books. 
It literally means the "best life." This word is 
afterward contracted, with a slight change, into 
the Persian word "Behesht, " which is the super- 
lative form of "Veh, " meaning "good," and cor- 
responds exactly with our English word "best." 
Hell is known by the name of "Achishta-ahu. " Heaven 
is represented as a place of radiance, splendor and 
glory, and hell as that of gloom, darkness and stench. 
Between heaven and this world there is supposed to 
be a bridge named "chinvat. " This word — from the 
Aryan root "chi," meaning to pick up, to collect — 
means the place where a man's soul has to present a 
collective account of the actions done in the past 
life. 

PROGRESS OE THE DEPARTED SOUL. 

According to the Parsee scriptures, for three days 
after a man's death his soul remains within the limits 
of the world under the guidance of the angel Srosh. 
If the deceased be a pious man or a man who led a 
virtuous life his soul utters the words "Ushta-ahmai v 
yahmai ushta-kahmaichit," i. e., "Well is he by whom 
that which is his benefit becomes the benefit of any 



122 THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

one else." If he be a wicked man or one who led an 
evil life, his soul utters these plaintive words : "Kam 
nemoi zam? Kuthra nemoayeni? i. e., "To which land 
shall I turn? Whither shall I go?" 

On the dawn of the third night the departed souls 
appear at the "Chinvat Bridge. " This bridge is guarded 
by the angel Meher Daver, i. e., Meher the judge. 
He presides there as a judge, assisted by the angels 
Rashne and Astad, the former representing justice and 
the latter truth. At this bridge and before this angel 
Meher, the soul of every man has to give an account 
of its doings in the past life. Meher Daver, the judge, 
weighs a man's actions by a scale-pan. If a man's 
good actions outweigh his evil ones, even by a small 
particle, he is allowed to pass from the bridge to the 
other end to heaven. If his evil actions outweigh his 
good ones, even by a small weight, he is not allowed 
to pass over the bridge, but is hurled down into the 
deep abyss of hell. If his meritorious and evil deeds 
counterbalance each other, he is sent to a place known 
as "hamast gehan," corresponding to the Christian 
"purgatory" and the Mahommedan "aeraf." His meri- 
torious deeds done in the past life would prevent him 
from going to hell, and his evil actions would not let 
him go to heaven. 

Again Zoroastrian books say that the meritorious- 
ness of good deeds and the sin of evil ones increase 
with the growth of time. As capital increases with 
interest, so good and bad actions done by a man in 
his life increase, as it were, with interest in their 
effects. - Thus a meritorious deed done in young age 
is more effective than that very deed done in advanced 
age. A man must begin practicing virtue from his 
very young age. As in the case of good deeds and 
their meritoriousness, so in the case of evil actions 






Religious system of the parsEes 123 

and their sins. The burden of the sin of an evil ac- 
tion increases; as it were, with interest. A young man 
has a long time to repent of his evil deeds and to do 
good deeds that could counteract the effect of his 
evil deeds. If he does not take advantage of these 
opportunities the burden of those evil deeds increases 
with time. 

FIRE WORSHIP OF THE PARSEES. 

The Parsee places of worship are known as fire 
temples. The very name fire temple would strike a non- 
Zoroastrian as an unusual form of worship. The 
Parsees do not worship fire as God. They merely 
regard fire as an emblem of refulgence, glory and light, 
as the most perfect symybol of God, and as the best 
and noblest representative of His divinity. "In the 
eyes of a Parsee his (fires) brightness, activity, purity 
and incorruptibility bear the most perfect resemblance 
to the nature and perfection of the Deity." A Parsee 
looks upon fire "as the most perfect symbol of the 
Deity on account of its purity, brightness, activity, 
subtilty, and incorruptibility." 

Again, one must remember that it is the several 
symbolic ceremonies that add to the reverence enter- 
tained by a Parsee for the fire burning in his fire 
temples. A new element of purity is added to the 
fire burning in the fire temples of the Parsees by the 
religious ceremonies accompanied with prayers that 
are performed over it, before it is installed in its 
place on a vase on an exalted stand in a chamber set 
apart. The sacred fire burning there is not the ordi- 
nary fire burning in our hearths. It has undergone 
several ceremonies, and it is these ceremonies, full of 
meaning, that render the fire more sacred in the eyes 
of a Parsee. We will briefly recount the process here. 



124 THE world's congress OF RELIGIONS 

In establishing a fire temple fires from various places 
of manufacture are brought and kept in different vases. 
Great efforts are also made to obtain fire caused by 
lightning. Over one of these fires a perforated metal- 
lic flat tray with a handle attached is held. On this 
tray are placed small chips and dust of fragrant sandal- 
wood. These chips and dust are ignited by the heat 
of the fire below, care being taken that the perforated 
tray does not touch the fire. Thus a new fire is cre- 
ated out of the first fire. Then from this new fire 
another is again produced, and so on, until the pro- 
cess is repeated nine times. The fire thus prepared 
after the ninth process is considered pure. The fires 
brought from other places of manufacture are treated 
in a similar manner. These purified fires are all col- 
lected together upon a large vase, which is then put 
in its proper place in a separate chamber. 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SACRED FIRE. 

Now what does a fire so prepared signify to a Par- 
see? He think to himself: "When this fire on this 
vase before me, though pure in itself, though the no- 
blest of the creations of God, and though the best 
symbol of the Divinity, had to undergo certain pro- 
cesses of purification, had to draw out, as it were, its 
essence— nay, its quintessence — of purity to enable 
itself to be worthy of occupying this exalted position, 
how much more necessary, more essential and more 
important it is for me — a poor mortal who is liable 
to commit sins and crimes, and who comes into con- 
tact with hundreds of evils, both physical and men- 
tal — to undergo the process of purity and piety by 
making my thoughts, words and actions pass, as it 
were, through a sieve of piety and purity, virtue and 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 125 

morality, and to separate by that means my good 
thoughts, good words and good actions from bad 
thoughts, bad words and bad actions, so that I may, 
in my turn, be enable to acquire an exalted position 
in the next world." 

Again, the fires put together as above are collected 
from the houses of men of different grades in society. 
This reminds a Parsee that, as all these fires from the 
houses of men of different grades have all, by the 
process of purification, equally acquired the exalted 
place in the vase, so before God all men — no matter 
to what grades of society they belong — are equal, 
provided they pass through the process of purification, 
i. e., provided they preserve purity of thoughts, purity 
of words and purity of deeds. 

Again, when a Parsee goes before the sacred fire, 
which is kept all day and night burning in the fire 
temple, the officiating priest presents before him the 
ashes of a part of the consumed fire. The Parsee ap- 
plies it to his forehead just as a Christian applies the 
consecrated water in his church and thinks to himself: 
"Dust to dust. The fire, all brilliant, shining and re- 
splendent, has spread the fragrance of the sweet smell- 
ing sandal and frankincense round about, but is at 
last reduced to dust. So it is destined for me. After 
all I am to be reduced to dust and have to depart from 
this transient life. Let me do my best to spread, 
like this fire, before my death, the fragrance of char- 
ity and good deeds and lead the light of righteousness 
and knowledge before others." 

In short, the sacred fire burning in a fire temple 
serves as a perpetual monitor to a Parsee standing be- 
fore it to preserve piety, purity, humility and brother- 
hood. 



126 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

TAUGHT RELIGION BY NATURE. 

As we said above, evidence from nature is the surest 
evidence that leads a Parsee to the belief in the exist- 
ence of the Deity. From nature he is led to nature's 
God. From this point of view, then, he is not re- 
stricted to any particular place for the recital of his 
prayers. For a visitor to Bombay, which is the head- 
quarters of the Parsees, it is, therefore not unusual to 
see a number of Parsees saying their prayers, morning 
and evening, in the open space, turning their faces to 
the rising or the setting sun, before the glowing moon 
or the foaming sea. Turning to these grand objects, 
the best and sublimest of his creations, they address 
their prayers to the Almighty. 

All Parsee prayers begin with an assurance to do 
acts that would please the Almighty God. The assur. 
ance is followed by an expression of regret for past 
evil thoughts, words or deeds if any. Man is liable 
to err, and so, if during the interval any errors of 
commission or omission are committed, a Parsee in 
the beginning of his prayers repents for those errors. 
He says: 

O, Omniscient Lord! I repent of all my sins. I re- 
pent of all evil thoughts that I might have entertained 
in my mind, of all the evil words that I might have 
spoken, of all the evil actions that I might have com- 
mitted. O, Omniscient Lord! I repent of all the faults 
that might have originated with me, whether they 
refer to thoughts, words, or deeds, whether they ap- 
pertain to my body or soul, whether they be in con- 
nection with the material world or spiritual. 

EDUCATION AMONG THE PARSEES. 

To educate their children is a spiritual duty of 
Zoroastrian parents. Education is necessary, not only 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 127 

for the material good of the children and the parents, 
but also for their spiritual good. According to the 
Parsee books, the parents participate in the meritori- 
ousness of the good acts performed by their children 
as the result of the good education imparted to them. 
On the other hand, if the parents neglect the education 
of their children, and if, as the result of this neglect, 
they do wrongful acts or evil deeds, the parents have 
a spiritual responsibility for such acts. In proportion 
to the malignity or evilness of these acts the parents 
are responsible to God for their neglect of the educa- 
tion of their children. It is, as it were, a spiritual 
self-interest that must prompt a Parsee to look to the 
good education of his children at an early age. Thus 
from a religious point of view, education is a great 
question with the Parsees. 

The proper age recommended by religious Parsee 
books for ordinary education is seven. Before that age 
children should have home education with their par- 
ents, especially with the mother. At the age of seven, 
after a little religious education, a Parsee child is in- 
vested with Sudreh and Kusti, i. e., the sacred shirt 
and thread. This ceremony of investiture corresponds 
to the Confirmation ceremony of the Christians. A 
Parsee may put on the dress of any nationality he 
likes, but under that dress he must always wear the 
sacred shirt and thread. These are the symbols of 
his being a Zoroastrian. These symbols are full of 
meaning and act as perpetual monitors, advising the 
wearer to lead a life of purity — of physical and spirit- 
ual purity. A Parsee is enjoined to remove, and put 
on again immediately, the sacred thread several times 
during the day, saying a very short prayer during the 
process. He has to do so early in the morning on 
rising from bed, before meals and after ablutions. 



128 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

The putting on of the symbolic thread and the accom- 
panying short prayer remind him to be in a state of 
repentance for misdeeds if any, and to preserve good 
thoughts, good words, and good deeds, the triad in 
which the moral philosophy of Zoroaster moved. 

GIRLS ALSO ARE EDUCATED. 

It is after this investiture with the sacred shirt and 
thread that the general education of a child generally 
begins. The Parsee books speak of the necessity of 
educating all children, whether male or female. Thus 
female education claims as much attention among the 
Parsees as male education. Physical education is as 
much spoken of in Zoroastrian books as mental and 
moral education. The health of the body is considered 
as the first requisite for the health of the soul. That 
the physical education of the ancient Persians, the 
ancestors of the modern Parsees, was a subject of ad- 
miration among the ancient Greeks and Romans is too 
well known. In all the blessings invoked upon one 
in the religious prayers, the strength of body occupies 
the first and the most prominent place. Analyzing 
the Bombay Census of 1881, Dr. Weir, the Health 
Officer, said : 

Examining education according to faith or class, we 
find that education is most extended among the Parsee 
people; female education is more diffused among the 
Parsee population than any other classes. * * * 
Contrasting these results with education at an early 
age among Parsees, we find 12.2 per cent Parsee male 
and 8.84 per cent female children under six years of 
age, under instruction ; between six and fifteen the num- 
ber of Parsee male and female children under instruct- 
ion is much larger than in any other class. Over fif- 
teen years of age, the smallest proportion of illiterate, 
either male or female, is found in the Parsee population. 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES I2C; 

The religious books of the Parsees say that the ed- 
ucation of Zoroastrian youths should teach them per- 
fect discipline, obedience to their teachers, obedience 
to their parents, obedience to their elders in society 
and obedience to the constitutional forms of govern- 
ment should be one of the practical results of their 
education. So a Zoroastrian child is asked to be 
affectionate toward and submissive to his teachers. 
A Parsee mother prays for a son that could take an 
intelligent part in the deliberations of the councils of 
his community and government; so a regard for the 
regular forms of government was necessary. 

CLEANLINESS OF THE PARSEES. 

Of all the practical questions the one most affected 
by the religious precepts of Zoroastrianism is that of 
the observation of sanitary rules and principles. Sev- 
eral chapters of the Vendidad form, as it were, the 
sanitary code of the Parsees. Most of the injunctions 
will stand the test of sanitary science for ages together. 
Of the different Asiatic communities inhabiting Bom- 
bay the Parsees have the lowest death rate. One can 
safely say that that is, to a great extent, due to the 
Zoroastrian ideas of sanitation, segregation, purifica- 
tion and cleanliness. A Parsee is enjoined not to 
drink from the same cup or glass from which another 
man has drunk, lest he catch by contagion the dis- 
ease from which the other may be suffering. He is, 
under no circumstances, to touch the body of a person 
a short time after death, lest he spread the disease, 
if contagious, of the deceased. If he accidentally or 
unavoidably does, he has to purify himself by a cer- 
tain process of washing before he mixes with others 
in society. A passing fly, or even a blowing wind, is 

Congress of Religions 9 



I30 THE WORLDS CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

supposed to spread disease by contagion. So he is 
enjoined to perform ablutions several times during 
the day, as before saying his prayers, before meals, 
and after answering the calls of nature. If his hand 
comes into contact with the saliva of his own mouth 
or with that of somebody else, he has to wash it. He 
has to keep himself aloof from corpse-bearers, lest he 
spread any disease through them. If accidentally he 
come into contact with these people, he has to bathe 
himself before mixing in society. A breach of these 
and various other sanitary rules is, as it were, helping 
the cause of the Evil Principle. 

Again, Zoroastrianism asks its disciples to keep the 
earth pure, to keep the air pure, and to keep the water 
pure. It considers the sun the greatest purifier. In 
places where the rays of the sun do not enter, fire over 
which fragrant wood is burnt is the next purifier. It 
is a great sin to pollute water by decomposing matter. 
Not only is the commission of a fault of this kind a 
sin, but also the omission, when one sees such a pollu- 
tion, of taking proper means to remove it. A Zoro- 
astrian, when he happens to see, while passing on his 
way, a running stream of drinking water polluted by 
some decomposing matter, such as a corpse, is en- 
joined to wait and try his best to go into the stream 
and to remove the putrifying matter, lest its continua- 
tion may spoil the water and affect the health of the 
people using it. An omission to do . this act is a sin 
from a Zoroastrian point of view. At the bottom of 
a Parsee's custom of disposing of the dead and at the 
bottom of all the strict religious ceremonies enjoined 
therewith lies the one main principle, viz., that, pre- 
serving all possible respect for the dead, the body, 
after its separation from the immortal soul, should be 
disposed of in a way the least harmful and the least 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES I3I 

injurious to the living. The homely proverb of "clean- 
liness is godliness" is nowhere more recommended 
than in the Parsee religious books, which teach that 
the cleanliness of body will lead to and help the clean- 
liness of mind. 

We now come to the question of wealth, poverty 
and labor. As Herodotus said, a Parsee, before pray- 
ing for himself, prays for his sovereign and for his com- 
munity, for he is himself included in the community- 
His religious precepts teach him to drown his indi- 
viduality in the common interests of his community. 
He is to consider himself as a part and parcel of the 
whole community. The good of the whole will be the 
good — and that a solid good — of the parts. In the 
twelfth chapter of the Yasna, which contains, as it 
were, Zoroastrian articles of faith, a Zoroastrian prom- 
ises to preserve a perfect brotherhood. He promises, 
even at the risk of his life, to protect the life and the 
property of all the members of his community and to 
help in the cause that would bring about their pros- 
perity and welfare. It is with these good feelings of 
brotherhood and charity that the Parsee community 
has endowed large funds for benevolent and charitable 
purposes. If the rich Parsees of the future genera- 
tions were to follow in the footsteps of their ancestors 
of the past and present generations in the matter of 
giving liberal donations for the good of the deserving 
poor of their community, one can say that there would 
be very little cause for the socialists to complain 
from a poor man's point of view. It is these notions 
of charity and brotherhood that have urged them to 
start public funds for the general good of the whole 
community. Men of all grades in society contribute 
to these funds on various occasions. The rich con- 
tribute on occasions both of joy and grief. On grand 



132 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

occasions like those of weddings in their families they 
contribute large sums in charity to commemorate those 
events. Again on the death of their dear ones, the 
rich and the poor all pay various sums, according to 
their means, in charity. These sums are announced 
on the occasion of the Oothumna, or the ceremony on 
the third day after death. The rich pay large sums 
on these occasions to commemorate the names of their 
dear ones. In the Vendidad three kinds of charitable 
deeds are especially mentioned as meritorious : To 
help the poor; to help a man to marry, and thus to 
enable him to lead a virtuous and honorable life, and 
to give education to those who are in search of it. If 
one were to look to the long list of Parsee charities, 
headed by that of that prince of Parsee charity, the 
first Parsee baronet, he will find these three kinds of 
charity especially attended to. The religious training 
of a Parsee does not restrict his ideas of brotherhood 
and charity to his own community alone. He extends 
his charity to non-Zoroastrians as well. 

DUTIES OF HUSBANDS AND WIVES. 

The qualifications of a good husband, from a Zoro- 
astrian point of view, are that he must be (1) young 
and handsome; (2) strong, brave and healthy ; (3) dil- 
igent and industrious, so as to maintain his wife and 
children; (4) truthful, as would prove true to herself, 
and true to all others with whom he would come in 
contact, and is wise and educated. A wise, intelli- 
gent and educated husband is compared to a fertile 
piece of land which gives a plentiful crop, whatever 
kind of seeds are sown in it. The qualifications of 
a good wife are that she be wise and educated, mod- 
est and courteous, obedient and chaste. Obedience 



kELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES 13$ 

to her husband is the first duty of a Zoroastrian wife. 
It is a great virtue, deserving all praise and reward. 
Disobedience is a great sin, punishable after death. 
According to the Sad-dar, a wife that expressed a 
desire to her husband three times a day — in the morn- 
ing, afternoon and evening — to be one with him in 
thoughts, words and deeds, i. e., to sympathize with 
him in all his noble aspirations, pursuits and desires, 
performed as meritorious an act as that of saying her 
prayers three times a day. She must wish to be of 
the same view with him in all his noble pursuits and 
ask him every day "What are your thoughts, so that 
I may be one with you in those thoughts? What are 
your words, so that I may be one with you in your 
speech? What are your deeds, so that I may be one 
with you in deeds?" A Zoroastrian wife so affection- 
ate and obedient to her husband was held in great re- 
spect, not only by the husband and the household, 
but in society as well. As Dr. West says, though a 
Zoroastrian wife was asked to be very obedient to her 
husband, she held a more respectable position in so- 
ciety than that enjoined by any other Oriental relig- 
ion. As Sir John Malcolm says, the ordinance of 
Zoroaster secured for Zoroastrian women an equal 
rank with the male creation. The progress of the an- 
cient Persians in civilization was partly due to this 
cause. "The great respect in which the female sex 
was held was, no doubt, the principal cause of the 
progress they made in civilization. These were at 
once the cause of generous enterprise and its reward." 
The advance of the modern Parsis, the descendants 
of the ancient Persians, in the path of civilization is 
greatly due to this cause. As Dr. Haug says, the re- 
ligious books of the Parsis hold women on a level 
with men. "They are always mentioned as a neces* 



134 

sary part of the religious community. They have the 
same religious rites as men; the spirits of deceased 
women are invoked as well as those of men." 

Parsee books attach as much importance to female 
education as to male education. 

MARRIAGE REGARDED AS A DUTY. 

Marriage is an institution which is greatly encour- 
aged by the spirit of the Parsee religion. It is es- 
pecially recommended in the Parsee Scriptures on the 
ground that a married life is more likely to be happy 
than an unmarried one; that a married person is more 
likly to be able to withstand physical and mental 
afflictions than an unmarried person, and that a mar- 
ried man is more lmely to lead a religious and virtu- 
ous life than an unmarried one. The following verse 
in the Gatha conveys this meaning: 

I say (these) words to you marrying brides and to 
you bridegrooms. Impress them in your mind. May 
you two enjoy the life of good mind by following the 
laws of religion. Let each one of you clothe the other 
with righteousness, because then assuredly there will 
be a happy life for you. 

An unmarried person is represented to feel as un- 
happy as a fertile piece of ground that is carelessly 
allowed to lie uncultivated by its owner (Vend, iii., 
24). The fertile piece, when cultivated, not only adds 
to the beauty of the spot, but lends nourishment and 
food to many others round about. So a married couple 
not only add to their own beauty, grace and happi- 
ness, but by their righteousness and good conduct are 
in a position to spread the blessings of help and hap- 
piness among their neighbors. Marriage being thus 
considered a good institution, and being recommended, 
by the religious scriptures, it is considered a very 



RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE PARSEES T35 

meritorious act for a Parsee to help his co-religionists 
to lead a married life (Vend., iv., 44). Several rich 
Parsees have, with this charitable view, founded en- 
dowment funds, from which young, deserving brides 
are given small sums on the occasion of their mar- 
riage for the preliminary expenses of starting in mar- 
ried life. 

Fifteen is the minimum marriageable age spoken of 
by the Parsee books. The parents have a voice of 
sanction or approval in the selection of wives and hus- 
bands. Mutual friends of parents or marrying parties 
may bring about a good selection. Marriages with 
non-Zoroastrians are not recommended, as they are 
likely to bring about quarrels and dissensions owing 
to a difference of manners, customs and habits. 

We said above that the Parsee religion has made 
its disciples tolerant about the faiths and beliefs of 
others. It has as well made them sociable with the 
other sister communities of the country. They mix 
freely with members of other faiths and take a part 
in the rejoicings of their holidays. They also sympa- 
thize with them in their griefs and afflictions, and in 
case of sudden calamities, such as fire, floods, etc., 
they subscribe liberally to alleviate their misery. From 
a consideration of all kinds of moral and charitable 
notions inculcated in the Zoroastrian scriptures, Fran- 
cis Power Cobbe, in his "Studies, New and Old, of 
Ethical and Social Subjects," says of the founder of 
the religion: 

Should we in a future world be permitted to hold 
high converse with the great departed, it may chance 
that in the Bactrian sage, who lived and taught almost 
before the dawn of history, we may find the spiritual 
patriarch, to whose lessons we have owed such a por- 
tion of our intellectual inheritance that we might 
hardly conceive what human belief would be now, had 
Zoroaster never existed. 



CHAPTER VI 

JANISM 

"The Ethics and History of the Jains" was the 
subject of an address by Virchand A. Ghandi, of 
Bombay, as follows: 

Mr. President and Gentlemen: — I wish that the 
duty of addressing you on the history and tenets of 
the Jain faith world had fallen on an abler person than 
myself. The inclemency of the climate, and the dis- 
tant voyage which one has to undertake before he can 
come here, have prevented abler Jains than myself 
from attending this grand assembly and presenting 
their religious convictions to you in person. You 
will therefore look upon me as simply the mouthpiece 
of Muni Almarimji, the learned high-priest of the 
Jain community in India, who has devoted his whole 
life to the study of that ancient faith. I am truly 
sorry that Muni Almarimji is not among us to take 
charge of the duty of addressing you. 

Without further prefacel shall at once go to the sub- 
ject of the day. It will be convenient to divide this pa- 
per into two parts: First, "The Philosophy and Ethics 
of the Jains;" second, "The History of the Jains." 

i. Janism has two ways of looking at things — one 
called Dravyarthekaraya and the other Paryayartheka 
Noya. I shall illustrate them. The production of a 
law is the production of something not previously ex- 
isting, if we think of it from the latter point of view, 

136 



JANISM 137 

i. e., as a Paryaya, or modification; while it is not 
the production of something not previously existing 
if we look at it from the former point of view, i. e. 
as a Dravya or substance. According to the Dravay- 
arthekaraya view the universe is without beginning and 
end, but according to the Paryayartheka view we have 
creation and destruction at every moment. 

The Jain canon may be divided into two parts: 
First, Shrute Dharma, i. e., philosophy; and sec- 
ond, Chatra Dharma, i. e., ethics. 

NATURE OF NINE PRINCIPLES. 

The Shrate Dharma inquires into the nature of nine 
principles, six substances, six kinds of living beings 
and four states of existence— Jiva (sentient baings), 
Ajiva (non-sentient things), Punya (merit), Papa (de- 
merit). Of the nine principles, the first is pua (soul). 
According to the Jain view soul is that element which 
knows, thinks and feels. It is in fact the divine ele- 
ment in the living being. The Jain thinks that the 
phenomena of knowledge, feeling, thinking and will- 
ing are conditioned on something and that that some- 
thing must be as real as anything can be. This "soul" 
is in a certain sense different 'from knowledge and in 
another sense identical with it. So far as one's knowl- 
edge is concerned the soul is identical with it, but so 
far as some one else's knowledge is concerned it is 
different from it. The true nature of soul is right 
knowledge, right faith and right conduct. The soul, 
so long as it is subject to transmigration, in undergo- 
ing evolution and involution. 

The second principle is nonsoul. It is not simply 
what we understand by matter, but it is more than 
that. Matter is a term contrary to soul. But nonsoul 
is its contradictory. Whatever is not soul is nonsoul. 



I38 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

The rest of the nine principles are but the different 
states produced by the combination and separation of 
soul and nonsoul. The third principle is Punya (mer- 
it). That, on account of which a being is happy, is 
Punya. The fourth principle is Papa (demerit), that 
on account of which a being suffers from misery. The 
fifth is Ashrana, the state which brings in merit and 
demerit. The seventh is Nirjara, destruction of ac- 
tions. The eighth is Bardha, with bondage of soul, 
with Karwa, actions, The ninth is Moksha, total and 
permanent freedom of soul from all Karwas. 

DIVISION OF SUBSTANCE. 

Substance is divided into the sentient, or conscious, 
matter, stability, space and time. Six kinds of living 
beings are divided into six classes, earth body beings, 
water body beings, fire body beings, wind body be- 
ings, vegetables, and all of them having one organ of 
sense, that of touch. These are again divided into 
four classes of beings having two organs of sense, 
those of touch and of taste, such as tapeworms, 
leeches, etc.; beings having three organs of sense, 
those of taste, touch and smell, such as ants, lice, etc. ; 
beings having four organs of sense, those of touch, 
taste, smell and sight, such as bees, scorpions, etc: 
beings having five organs of sense, those of touch, 
taste, smell, sight and hearing. There are human be- 
ings, animals, birds, men and gods. All these living 
beings have four, five or six of the following capaci- 
ties: Capacity of taking food, capacity of constructing 
body, capacity of constructing organs, capacity of res- 
piration, capacity of speaking and the capacity of 
thinking. Beings having one organ of sense, that is, 
of touch, have the first four capacities. Beings hav- 



JANISM 139 

ing two, three and four organs of sense, have the first 
five capacities, while those having five organs have all 
the six capacities. 

The Jain canonical book treats very elaborately of 
the minute divisions of the living beings, and their 
prophets have long before the discovery of the micro- 
scope been able to tell how many organs of sense the 
minutest animalcule has. I would refer those who are 
desirous of studying Jain biology, zoology, botany, 
anatomy and physiology to the many books published 
by our society. 

I shall now refer to the four states of existence. 
They are naraka, tiryarch, manushyra and deva. Nar- 
aka is the lowest state of existence, that of being a 
denizen of hell; tiryarch is the next, that of having 
an earth body, water body, fire body, wind body, vege- 
table, of having two, three or four organs, animal and 
birds. The third is manushyra, of being a man, and the 
fourth is deva, that of being a denizen of the celestial 
world. The highest state of existence is the Jain Mok- 
sha, the apotheosis in the sense that the mortal being by 
the destruction of all Karwan attains the highest spirit- 
ualism, and the soul being severed from all connection 
with matter regains its purest state and becomes di- 
vine. 

Having briefly stated the principal articles of Jain 
belief, I come to the grand questions the answers to 
which are the objects of all religious inquiry and the 
substance of all creeds. 

1. What is the origin of the universe? 

This involves the question of God. Gautama, the 
Buddha, forbids inquiry into the beginning of things. 
In the Brahmanical literature bearing on the consti- 
tution of cosmos frequent reference is made to the days 
and nights of Brahma, the periods of Mannantara and 



I40 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

the periods of Peroloya. But the Jains, leaving all 
symbolical expression aside, distinctly reaffirm the 
view previously promulgated by the previous hiero- 
phants, that matter and soul are eternal and cannot 
be created. You can affirm existence of a thing from 
one point of view, deny it from another, and affirm 
both existence and non-existence with reference to it 
at different times. If you should think of affirming 
both existence and non-existence at the same time, 
from the same point of view, you must say that the 
thing cannot be spoken of similarly, under certain cir- 
cumstances the affirmation of existence is not pos- 
sible; of non-existence and also of both. 

What is meant by these seven modes is that a thing 
should not be considered as existing everywhere at all 
times in all wa3 7 s, and in the form of everything. It 
may exist in one place and not in another at one 
time. It is not meant by these modes that there is 
no certainty, or that we have to deal with probabili- 
ties only, as some scholars have taught. Even the 
great Bedantist Shoukarachaya has possibly erred 
when he says that the Jains are agnostics. All that 
is implied is that every assertion which is true is true 
only under certain conditions of substance, space, 
time, etc. 

FROM ALL STANDPOINTS. 

This is the great merit of the Jain philosophy, that 
while other philosophies make absolute assertions, 
the Jain looks at things from all standpoints, and 
adapts itself like a mightly ocean in which the sec- 
tarian rivers merge themselves. What is God, then? 
God, in the sense of an extra cosmic personal creator, 
has no place in the Jain philosophy. It distinctly 
denies such creator as illogical and irrelevant in the 



JANISM I4I 

general scheme of the universe. But it lays down that 
there is a subtle essence underlying all substances, 
conscious as well as unconscious, which becomes an 
eternal cause of all modifications, and is termed God. 
But then the advocate of theism, holding that even 
primordial matter had its first cause — the God — argues 
that "everything that we know had a cause. How 
then, can it be but that the elements had a cause to 
which they are indebted for their existence?" That 
great philosopher, John Stuart Mill, replies: 

The fact of experience, however, when correctly ex- 
pressed, turns out to be, not that everything which 
we know derives its existence from the cause, but only 
every event or change. There is in nature a perma- 
nent element and also a changeable; the changes are 
always the effects of previous changes; the permanent 
existences, so far as we know, are not effects at all. 
It is true we are accustomed to say, not only of events 
but of objects, that they are produced by causes, as 
water by the union of hydrogen and oxygen. But by 
this we only mean that when they begin to exist their 
beginning is the effect of a cause. But their begin- 
ning to exist is not an object, it is an event. If it 
be objected that the cause of a thing's beginning to ex- 
ist may be said with propriety to be the cause of the 
thing itself, I shall not quarrel with the expression. 
But that which in an object begins to exist is that in 
it which belongs to the changeable element in nature, 
the outward form and the properties depending upon 
mechanical or chemical combinations of its component 
parts. There is in every object another and a per- 
manent element, viz. : the specific elementary sub- 
stance or substances of which it consists and their in- 
herent properties. These are not known to us as be- 
ginning to exist; within the range of human knowl- 
edge they have no beginning, consequently no cause; 
though they themselves are causes or con-causes of 
everything that takes place. Experience, therefore, 
affords no evidences, not even analogies, to justify our 



142 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

extending to the apparently immutable a generaliza- 
tion grounded only on our observation of the change- 
able. 

As a fact of experience, then, causation cannot le- 
gitimately be extended to the material universe itself, 
but only to its changeable phenomena; of these, in- 
deed, causes may be affirmed without any exception. 
But what causes? The cause of every change is a 
prior change, and as such it cannot but be, for if there 
were no new antecedent there would not be a new 
consequent. If the state of facts which brings the phe- 
nomenon into existence had existed always, or for an 
indefinite duration, the effect also would have existed 
always or been produced in indefinite time ago. It is 
thus a necessary part of the fact of causation, within 
the sphere of our experience, that the causes, as well 
as the effects, had a beginning in time and were them- 
selves caused. It would seem, therefore, that our ex- 
perience, instead of furnishing an argument for the 
first cause, is repugnant to it, and that the very es- 
sential of causation as it exists within the limits of 
our knowledge is incompatible with a first cause. 

This doctrine of the transmigration of soul, or the 
reincarnation, is another grand idea of the Jain phi- 
losophy. Once the whole civilized world embraced 
this doctrine. Many philosophers have upheld it. 
Scientists like Flammarion, Figuier and Brewster have 
advocated it. Theologians like Muller, Dorner and 
Edward Beecher have maintained it. The Bible and 
sacred literature of the east are full of it, and it is 
to-day accepted by the majority of the world's inhab- 
itants. 

People are talking of design in nature. But what 
does the idea of design lead to? Design means con- 
trivance, adaptation of means to an end. But the ne- 



JANISM I43 

cessity of contrivance, the need of employing means, 
is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who 
would have recourse to means if to attain his end his 
mere word was sufficient? 

But how shall we reconcile God's infinite benevo- 
lence and justice with his infinite power, when we 
look around and see that some of his creatures are 
born happy and others miserable? Why is he so par- 
tial? Where is the moral responsibility of a person 
having no incentive to lead a virtuous life? The 
problem of injustice and misery which broods over 
our world can only be explained by the doctrine of 
reincarnation and Karma, to which I am presently 
coming. 

That the soul is immortal is doubted by very few. 
It is an old declaration that whatever begins in time 
must end in time. You cannot say that the soul is eter- 
nal on one side of its earthly period without being so in 
the other. If the soul sprang into existence specially 
for this life, why should it continue afterward? The 
ordinary idea of creation at birth involves the corolla- 
tive of annihilation at death. Moreover, it does not 
stand to reason that from an infinite history the soul 
enters this world for its first and all physical existence, 
and then merges into an endless spiritual eternity. The 
more reasonable education is that it has passed through 
many lives and will have to pass through many more 
before it reaches its ultimate goal. But it is directed 
that we have no memory of past lives. Can anyone 
recall his childhood? Has anyone a memory of that 
wonderful epoch — infancy? 

The companion doctrine of transmigration is the 
doctrine of Karma. The Sanscrit of the word Karrna 
means action. "With what measure ye mete, it shall 
be measured to you again" and "Whatsoever a man 



144 THE world's congress of religions 

soweth, that shall he also reap" are but the corollaries 
of that most intricate law of Karmon. It solves the 
problem of the inequality and apparent injustice of the 
world. 

CLASSES IN JAIN PHILOSOPHY. 

The Karmon in the Jain philosophy is divided into 
eight classes: Those which act as an impediment to 
the knowledge of truth; those which act as an imped- 
iment to the right insight of various sorts; those which 
give one pleasure or pain, and those which produce 
bewilderment. The other four are again divided into 
other classes, so minutely, that a student of Jain Kar- 
mon philosophy can trace any effect to a particular 
Karma. No other Indian philosophy reads so beauti- 
fully and so clearly the doctrine of Karmas. Persons 
who, by right faith, right knowledge and right con- 
duct destroy all Karmon and thus fully develop the 
nature of their soul, reach the highest perfection, be- 
come divine and are called Jinias. Those Jinias who, 
in every age, preach the law and establish the order, 
are called Tirtharkaros. 

I now come to the Jain ethics. Different philoso- 
phers have given different bases for the guidance of 
comfort. The Jain ethics direct conduct to be so 
adapted as to insure the fullest development of the 
soul — the highest happiness, that is the goal of human 
conduct, which is the ultimate end of human action. 
Jainism teaches to look upon all living beings as upon 
himself. What then is the mode of attaining the 
highest happiness? The sacred books of the Brah- 
mins prescribe Upasona (devotion and Karma). The 
Vedanta indicates the path of knowledge as the means 
to the highest. But Janism goes a step farther and 
says that the highest happiness is to be obtained by 



JANISM 145 

knowledge and religious observances. The five Ma- 
haratas or great precepts for Jain ascetics are: 

Not to kill, i. e., to protect all life. 
Not to lie. 

Not to take that which is not given. 
To abstain from sexual intercourse. 
To renounce all interest in worldly things, especially 
to call nothing one's own. 



Congress of Religions 10 



CHAPTER VII 

MOHAMETANISM 

With his head surmounted by a red fez and his 
bushy brown beard, Mohammed Alexander Russell 
Webb, the American convert to the creed of Islam, 
was presented to speak on the principles of the creed 
which he professes. He met with a reception wherein 
hisses and cheers were equally mingled. Cries of 
"Shame" greeted him when he spoke of polygamy, 
but there was enthusiastic approval when he said 
that the Mussulman daily offers his prayers to the 
same God that the Christian adores. He said: 

I wish I could express to you the gratification I feel 
at being able to appear before you to-day, and that I 
could impress upon your minds the feelings of millions 
of Mussulmans in India, Turkey, and Egypt, who are 
looking to this Parliament of Religions with the deep- 
est, the fondest hope. There is not a Mussulman on 
earth who does not believe that ultimately Islam will 
be the universal faith. It may surprise you to know 
that five times a day regularly, year in and year out, 
from every Mussulman's heart goes forth the sentiment 
we have just sung, 'Nearer, My God, to Thee." [Ap- 
plause.] To-morrow I expect to speak upon the "In- 
fluence of Islam on Social Conditions." 

DEFENDS ISLAMIC POLYGAMY. 

But to-day I have been requested to make a state- 
ment very briefly in regard to something that is con- 

146 



MOHAMETANISM 147 

sidered universally as part and parcel of the Islamic 
system. There are thousands and thousands of peo- 
ple who seem to be in mortal terror that the curse of 
polygamy is to be inflicted upon them at once. Now 
I want to say to you honeslty and fairly that polygamy 
never was and is not a part of the Islamic system. 
To engraft polygamy upon our social system in the 
condition in which it is to-day would be a curse. 
There are parts of the East where it is practiced. There 
are conditions under which it is beneficial. [Cries 
of "No," hisses, and slight applause.] But we must 
first understand what it really means to the Mussul- 
man, not what it means to the American. I say that 
a pure minded man can be a polygamist and be a per- 
fect and true Christian [cries of "No," "No," hisses^ 
and groans], but he must not be a sensualist. When 
you understand what the Mussulman means by polyg- 
amy, what he means by taking two or three wives, any 
man who is honest and faithful and pure-minded will 
say "God speed him." [Cries of "No," "Shame," 
hisses and applause.] Now, I don't intend to go into 
this subject. With the gentleman who first spoke 
I am an American of the Americans. I carried with 
me for years the same errors that thousands of Amer- 
icans carry with them to-day. Those errors have grown 
upon history, false history has influenced your opin- 
ion of Islam. It influenced my opinion of Islam, and 
when I began ten years ago to study the Oriental re- 
ligions I threw Islam aside as altogether too corrupt 
for consideration. But when I came to go beneath the 
surface, to know what Islam really is, to know who 
and what the prophet of Arabia was, I changed my be- 
lief very materially, and I am proud to say that I am 
now a Mussulman. [Applause.] I have not returned 
to the United States to make you all Mussulmans in 



I48 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

spite of yourselves; I never intended to do it in the 
world. I do not propose to take a sword in one hand 
and the Koran in another and go through the world 
killing every man who does not say, ' La illaha illala 
Mohammud resoul Allah." [There is no God but one 
and Mohammed is the prophet of God.] But I have 
faith in the American intellect, in the American intel- 
ligence, and in the American love of fair play, and 
I will defy any intelligent man to understand Islam 
and not love it. [Applause.] 

HAS MORE RELIGION THAN THEOLOGY. 

It was at first suggested that I should speak on the 
theology of Islam. There are some systems which 
have in them more theology than religion. Fortu- 
nately Islam has more religion than theology. [Ap- 
plause.] There are various explanations of the mean- 
ing of the word religion. One has but to read Max 
Miiller's gifted lectures to understand what a variety 
of meanings there are to the word. We may simply 
consider that it means a system by which man hopes 
to inherit happiness beyond the grave. What the con- 
ditions may be beyond the grave may be questioned 
and speculated upon, but in its broader sense religion 
is that system which leads us to or gives to us the 
hope, of a future life. In order to understand Islam 
and its effects, to understand the spirit of Islam, it 
is necessary to take into consideration human nature 
in all its aspects. Do you suppose that any active re- 
ligionist who has studied only his own system of re- 
ligion, who knows nothing about other systems, can 
write fairly of any other system? [Applause.] It is 
absolutely impossible. I have read every history of 
Mohammed and Islam published in English, and I 



MOHAMETANISM 1 49 

say to you there is not a single one of them except the 
work of Ameer Ali of Calcutta which reflects at all in 
any sense the spirit of Islam. We will take the work 
of Washington Irving for example. Washington Irv- 
ing evidently intended to be fair and honest; it is 
apparent in every line that he meant to tell the truth, 
but his information came through channels that were 
muddy, and, while he is appalled at what he consid- 
ers the vicious character of the prophet, he is com- 
pletely surprised at times to find out what a pure and 
holy man he was. 

Now, the first book I ever read in English upon 
Islam was "The Life of Mohammed," by Washington 
Irving, and the strongest feature of that work was its 
uncertainty. In one page he would say Mohammed 
was a good, a pure, and a holy man, and it was a 
shame he was not a Christian, but his impious rejec- 
tion of the trinity shut him out from salvation and 
made him an impostor. These were not the exact 
words that Irving used, but they convey practically 
his meaning. After saying these things he goes on to 
say what a sensuous, grasping, avaricious tyrant the 
prophet was, and he closes his work by saying that 
the character of the prophet is so enigmatical that he 
cannot fathom it. He is uncertain finally whether 
Mohammed was a good man or a bad man. 

MOHAMMMED A YOUTH OF PURE CHARACTER. 

In order to understand the spirit of Islam let us take 
the prophet as a child. He was born in Mecca. All 
histories — and I shall now state simply what Christian 
historians have written of him — are agreed that he was 
remarkable as a boy for the purity of his character. 
He was utterly free from the vices which afflicted the 



150 THE WORLD* S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

youth of Mecca. As he grew to manhood his charac- 
ter became unimpeachable, so much so that he was 
known all over the city as "The Trusted. " These 
characteristics with which he is credited by Christian 
writers were manifested in no degree whatever. He 
began life as a merchant following his uncle's caravans 
to Southern Europe and Syria, and he demonstrated 
the fact that he was an excellent business man. He was 
successful, so much so that the wealthy widow Kha- 
dijah, whose husband had died, selected him to take 
charge of her business interests. He had never dis- 
played any disposition to associate with the fair sex; 
sensualty was no part of his character at all. He 
married this widow, and with her accumulated a large 
fortune with which he engaged in the same trade as 
his uncle, Abu Taleb. This marriage, by the way, was 
not brought about by Mohammed. He did not go to 
Khadijah and ask her to be his wife, but she, taking 
perhaps a mercenary view of the situation, engaged 
him for life to be her business manager. Mohammed 
rejected the proposal at first and would have refused 
it altogether, but his uncle, Abu Taleb, said it was 
the best thing he could do and that he should marry 
her. Notwithstanding the fact that the laws of his 
country allowed him to take as many wives as he 
pleased, Christian historians agree that he was true 
to Khadijah for twenty-five years and never availed 
himself of the opportunity to take another wife. He 
was true to her until the day of her death. 

Now, let us see what the word Islam means. It is the 
most expressive word in existence for a religion. It 
means simply and literally resignation to the will of 
God. It means aspiration to God. The Islam system 
is designed to cultivate all that is purest and noblest 
in the human character. Some people say Islam is 



MOHAMETANISM 151 

impossible in a high state of civilization. Now that 
is the result of ignorance. Look at Spain in the eighth 
century, when it was the center of all the arts and sci- 
ences, when Christian Europe went to Moslem Spain 
to learn all that there was worth knowing, languages, 
arts, all the new discoveries were to be found in Mos- 
lem Spain and in Moslem Spain alone. There was 
no civilization in the world as high as that of Moslem 
Spain, With this spirit of resignation to the will of 
God is inculcated the idea of individual responsibil- 
ity — that every man is responsible not to this man, 
or that man, or the other man, but responsible to God 
for every thought and act of his life. [Applause.] He 
must pay for every act he commits; he is rewarded 
for every thought he thinks. There is no mediator, 
there is no priesthood, there is no ministry. The 
Moslem brotherhood stands upon a perfect equality, 
recognizing only the fatherhood of God and the broth- 
erhood of man. The emar who leads in prayer preaches 
no sermon. He goes to the mosque every day at noon 
and reads two chapters from the holy Koran. He de- 
scends to the floor upon a perfect level with the hun- 
dreds, or thousands, of worshipers and the prayer goes 
on, he simply leading it. 

The whole system is calculated to inculcate that 
idea of perfect brotherhood. The subject is so broad, 
there is so much of it, that I can only touch upon it. 
There is sa much unfamiliar to Americans and Eng- 
lishmen in Islam that I regret exceedingly I have not 
more time to speak of it. A man said to me in New 
York the other day : "Must I give up Jesus and the 
Bible if I become a Mohammedan?" No, No! There 
is no Mussulman on earth who does not recognize 
the inspiration of Jesus. [Applause.]- The system 
is one that has been taught by Moses, by Abraham, 



152 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

by Jesus, by Mohammed, by every inspired man the 
world has ever known. You need not give up Jesus, 
but assert your manhood. Go to God. 

PRAY FIVE TIMES A DAY. 

Now let us look at the practical side of Islam in 
reference to the application of the spirit of Islam to 
daily life. A Mussulman is told that he must pray. 
So is every one else; so are the followers of every 
other religion. But the Mussulman is not told to pray 
when he feels like it, if it does not interfere with bus- 
iness, with his inclinations, or some particular en- 
gagement. Some people do not pray at such times; 
they say it does not make very much difference, we 
can make it up some other time. A little study of 
human nature will show that there are people who 
pray from a conscientious idea of doing a duty, but 
there are a great many others who shirk a duty every 
chance if it interferes with pleasure or business. The 
wisdom of Mohammed was apparent in the single item 
of prayer. He did not say, pray when you feel like it, 
but pray five times a day at a certain time. 

The Mussulman rises in the morning before day- 
light, because his first prayer must be said before the 
first traces of light appear in the east. At the first 
traces of day he sinks upon his knees and offers his 
prayer to God. The prayer can be said at no other 
time. That is the time to say it. The result is he 
must get up in the morning to do it. It encourages 
early rising. [Laughter and applause. J Now you 
may say that is a slavish system. Very true. Hu- 
manity differs materially. There are men who need a 
slavish system. We have evidences of it all around us 
in every religious system known. They want to be 




MOHAMMED ALEXANDER RUSSELE WEBB, 

American convert to the Islam religion. The first Mohametan missionai 
sent to America. 



MOHAMETANISM 1 53 

slaves to a system, and let us take that system which 
will accomplish the best results. [Aplause.] 

The next prayer is said between 12 and 1, or just 
as the sun is passing the meridian. At no other time. 
The third prayer is between 4 and 5. The fourth 
prayer is just as the sun has sunk in the west. The 
light of the day is dying out. The last prayer of the 
day is repeated just before he steps into bed. 

CLEANLINESS GOES WITH PRAYING. 

Now, before a man says a prayer he must wash 
himself — he performs his ablutions. The result is that 
the intelligent Mussulman is physically clean. It is 
not optional with him to take his bath and perform 
his ablutions when he sees fit, but he must do it just 
before he prays. That system as applied to the masses 
intelligently must secure beneficial results. There are 
Mohammedans who say they do not need to pray. The 
other Mohammedan says that is between you and 
God, I believe I must pray. The system is so thor- 
oughly elastic, so thoroughly applicable to all the 
needs of humanity, that it seems to me it is exactly 
the system that we need in our country, and that is 
why I am here, that is why I am in the United States. 

A gentleman asked me if we had organized a mis- 
sion in New York. I told him yes, but not in the 
ordinary sense, that we simply wanted people to study 
Islam and know what It was. The day of blind beliet 
has passed away. [Applause.] Intelligent humanity 
wants a reason for every belief, and I say that that 
spirit is commendable and should be encouraged 
wherever it goes, and that is one of the prominent 
features of the spirit of Islam. 

We speak of using force, that Mohammed went with 



154 THE world's congress of religions 

a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other. I 
want to show to you to-morrow that he did not do any 
thing of the sort. No man is expected to believe any- 
thing that is not in perfect harmony with his reason 
and common sense. 

There is one particular spirit which is a part of the 
Islamistic idea that prevails among the Moslems, and 
now I am speaking not of the lower classes, not of the 
masses of the Moslems that the missionaries see when 
they go to the East, but I am speaking of the educated 
intelligent Moslems, and they are the safest guides. 
No one would expect me to go into the slums of Chi- 
cago to find a reflection of the Christian religion. 
[Applause.] You cannot expect to find it in the 
character and the acts and the thoughts of a poor, ig- 
norant cooly who can neither read nor write, and who 
has associated with the most degraded characters all 
his life. But the spirit that prevails among the Mos- 
lems of the higher class is indifference to this world. 
This world is a secondary consideration and the world 
beyond is the world to strive for, the life beyond is the 
life that has some value to it. It is worth devoting 
all our lives to secure in *hat life happiness and per- 
fect bliss. The idea of paradise naturally follows. 

HOURI idea unfounded. 

It is popularly believed that Mohammed talked of 
a paradise where beautiful houris were given to men; 
that they led a life of sensual joy and luxury and all 
sort of thing. That idea is no more absurd than the 
golden streets and pearly gates idea of the Christian. 
Mohammed taught us a spiritual truth; he taught us 
a truth which every man who knows anything of the 
spiritual side of religion ought to know. And he taught 



MOHAMETANISM 155 

it in a manner which would most readily reach the 
minds and hearts of his hearers. The poor Arabs who 
lived in the dry sandy desert looked upon broad fields 
of green grass and flowing rivers and beautiful trees 
as a paradise. We who are accustomed perhaps to 
that sort of thing, some of us, run away with the idea, 
perhaps, that a golden street and pearly gates are bet- 
ter than that. His idea was to show them they were 
to secure perfect bliss, and to an Arab if he could 
reach an open field where the grass grew green under 
his feet and the birds sang and the trees bore pearls 
and rubies and all that sort of thing it would be bliss. 
Mind you, Mohammed never taught that, but he is 
credited with teaching it, and I believe he taught 
something to illustrate this great spiritual truth that 
he was trying to force upon their minds, and it has 
been corrupted into the idea of a garden full of houris.. 
The next feature of the spirit of Islam is its frater- 
nity. One of the first things that Mohammed did after 
being driven out of Mecca and located in Medinah 
was to encourage the formation of a Moslem brother- 
hood with a perfect community of property, a social- 
istic idea impracticable in this civilization but thor- 
oughly practical at that time. His followers assem- 
bled around him and contributed all they had. The 
idea was, do anything to help your brother, what be- 
longs to your brother belongs to you, and what be- 
longs to you belongs to your brother. [Applause.] 
If he need help, help him. Caste lines are broken 
down entirely. We find on one occasion Omar, one of 
the most energetic and vigorous of his Caliphs, ex- 
changed with his slave in riding on the camel. The 
daughters of Mohammed in the household^ would di- 
vide the time grinding corn with the slaves. The idea 
was taught, your slave is your brother. Social con- 



156 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ditions make him your slave, but he is none the less 
your brother. This idea of close fraternity, this ex- 
treme devotion to fraternity was the cause of the Mos- 
lem triumph at arms. In the later years after the 
death of Mohammed that idea was paramount in every 
instance, and it was only when that bond of frater- 
nity was broken that we find the decadence of the Is- 
lamistic power in Spain. 

THERE IS A BROTHERHOOD AMONG MUSSELMEN. 

Readers of history can readily trace where the first 
serpent made its entry into the Islamistic social sys- 
tem, that serpent of disunion in division. We find 
the Christians coming up upon the other side closely 
knit in the same bond of brotherhood. Does that bond 
of brotherhood exist to-day? It exists among the 
Mussulmans of India. It exists among the better class 
of Musselmans of Egypt and Turkey in a degree that 
would surprise you. I know an old man in Bombay 
who had lost everything, and was being helped along 
by his Mohammedan brethren. A wealthy man re- 
puted to be worth something like half a million owned 
a beautiful yacht, and this man went to him and said, 
"I want to borrow your yacht to go fishing." "Cer- 
tainly; take it whenever you want it, it is yours." 
During my stay in the East, every time I visited 
Bombay, almost, that old fellow would go out in the 
yacht fishing. I dined in the house of a wealthy 
Musselman and that same old man came in. As he 
entered the door he said, "Peace be with you." A 
chair was set for him at the table. We were eating 
at the table at that time, in deference to me, possibly. 
Usually they eat upon the floor in the most primitive 
fashion, and with their fingers, but the better class of 



MOHAMETANISM 157 

Mohammedans, or, rather, those who have acquired 
European ideas, eat with the fork and knife, with 
glass furniture on the table, etc. On that occasion 
we were at the table and this old man was invited to 
sit down and take dinner with us. That fraternal 
idea impressed me more deeply, possibly, than 
anything else. I felt that I was among my breth- 
ren and that Musselmans were brothers the world over, 
and I know that is one of the basic principles of the 
system and that belongs strictly to the spirit of Islam. 
In closing I want to say this, there is no system that 
has been so willfully and persistently misrepresented 
as Islam, both by writers of so-called history and by 
the newspaper press. There is no character in the 
whole range of history so little, so imperfectly un- 
derstood as Mohammed, and I feel that Americans as 
a rule are disposed to go to the bottom facts and to 
ascertain really what Mohammed was and what he 
did, and when they have done so I feel that we will 
have a universal system which will elevate our social 
system at least to the position where it belongs. I 
thank you. [Applause.] 

EVANGELIST MILLS SPEAKS. 

Dr. Barrows introduced the next speaker as one 
whose name had become familiar and dear to the 
American people East and West, North and South, 
the Rev. B. Fay Mills. 

Mr. Mills was received with great applause which 
he acknowledged, saying: "I thank you very heartily 
for your welcome not only to the man but to the 
theme." Then he went on to say: 

We are all agreed that in its present condition this 
is not an ideal world. We all believe that it is not 



158 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

what it is meant to be; we all hope that it is not 
what it is to become. 

The doctrine of Christianity centers not in a theory 
of morals nor a creed, but in a person. Christ is the 
revelation of what God is and of what man must be- 
come. He revealed the character of God as love suffer- 
ing for the sins of man. He showed the triumphant 
possibility of life among the hardest human conditions 
when lived in fellowship with God. He taught one 
great object lesson of trial and triumph, that there 
could be no excuse for sin, and that there would be 
no escape from righteousness. His one great mission 
and message was that God had "sent his Son into the 
world not to condemn the world, bat that the world 
through him might be saved. " 

He was himself the revelation of all history and 
mystery and prophecy concerning God and man, the 
origin and destiny of the race. His whole conception 
of himself was summed up in these words: "Christ the 
Saviour of the world," and we get the full thought of 
his revelation by emphasizing the latter part of this 
supreme title, and realizing that he came not to save 
selected individuals nor any chosen race, but to save 
the world. That his mission was too save humanity 
in all its relationships, to save individuals indeed, but 
also to save society and the nations. 

If Christianity is not fitted and destined to be the 
universal life of man it is for "nothing but to be cast 
out and to be trodden under foot of man." Christ 
stands or falls in connection with his claim to be the 
Saviour of the entire world. 

Wherever, in. the teaching of Christianity, there has 
been a limitation of the extent of the atonement of 
Christ for the saving of this world from out its pres- 
ent conditions of bondage and sin into the glorious 



MOHAMET ANISM 159 

liberty of redemption, there has come a deadly paraly- 
sis of his spirit and the progress of his kingdom. 

There is a real sense in which it was not necessary for 
Christ to come into the world in order that individuals 
might become acquainted with God. 

"The true light, that lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world," was shining in darkness for all the 
ages before the shepherds heard the angel song, and 
"as many as received him to them gave he the power 
to become the sons of God." And then the "word 
became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his 
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, 
full of grace and truth." 

But the mission of Jesus was to save the world 
itself. As a recent writer has well said, it is a deadly 
mistake to suppose that "Christ simply came to rescue 
as many as possible out of the wrecked and sinking 
world." He came to give the church a "commission 
that includes the saving of the wreck itself, the ques- 
tion of its confusion and struggle, the relief of its 
wretchedness, a deliverance from its destruction." 
This certainly was his own conception of his mission 
upon earth. 

This was also the conception of the disciples of 
Jesus of the earlier centuries. Their thought was that 
Christ had come, not to fit men for some other world, 
but to fit this world to be the abode of the sons of 
God, and to beget and develop the sons of God to oc- 
cupy it. 

The mission of Jesus Christ, as the Saviour of the 
world may be expressed, as has already been sug- 
gested, in four conceptions. 

First — He has a new and complete revelation of 
God's eternal suffering for the redemption of human- 
ity. He showed that God was pure, and unselfish, and 



l60 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

meek, and forgiving, and that he had always been 
suffering for the sins of men. "God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself. " He revealed the 
meaning of forgiveness and of deliverance from sin. 
A popular writer has suggested to us the vast distinc- 
tion between indifference to sin and its forgiveness, 
which may well be illustrated by the experience of an 
individual in forgiving injury against himself. Re- 
sentment against sin is a far higher experience than 
that of indifference to it, but there is something far 
better than either, and that is to realize the enormity 
of the transgression at its very worst and then to let 
it be destroyed, and a self-sacrificing love fill the place 
that had been occupied by the resentment. 

It has been costing God to forgive sin all that it 
had cost man to bear it and more. This had to be in 
God's thought before he made the world. In the 
words of a modern prophet, "the cross of Christ in- 
dicates the cost, and is the pledge of God's eternal 
friendship for man." Jesus Christ came to show us 
what God was. He was in no sense a shield for us 
from the wrath of God, but "was the effulgence of 
God's glory and the very image of his substance. " 
He said to one of his disciples, "He that hath seen 
me had seen the Father." The heart of his teaching 
was "that God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten son." He taught not that he had come 
to reconcile God unto the world, but that "God was 
in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." THe 
said of his father "I delight to do thy will, O God, 
thy law is written on my heart." He said in his prayer 
to his father, "I have declared thy name unto them; 
yea, and I will declare it. I have glorified thee on 
earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me 
to do." He came to show us that the world had never 



MOHAMETANISM l6l 

belonged to the powers of evil, but that in his original 
thought God had decided that a moral world should 
be created; and that in this decision, which gave to 
humanity the choice of good and evil, he had to take 
upon himself infinite suffering until the world should 
be brought back to him. The redemption of the world 
by Christ is a part of the creation of the world for 
Christ. 

Our second thought concerning the mission of Jesus 
is that his life was the expression of the origin and 
destiny of man. We are told that Adam was created 
in the image of God, and if he had been an obedient 
child, it may have been he would have grown up to 
be a full grown son of the Eternal; but he sold his 
birthright for a mess of pottage. The second Adam 
was the son of man, revealing to us that the perfect 
man differs in no respect from the perfect God. He 
was God. He became man — not a man, but man. He 
was God and man, not two persons in one existence, 
but revealing the identity of man and God, when man 
should have attained unto the place that he had always 
occupied in the eternal thought. The marvelous coun- 
terpart of this revelation is that when God shall have 
perfected his thought concerning us, that man shall 
have to become in all things like unto Jesus Christ. 
Maniel says that all depends on whether we consider 
the first or second Adam the head of the human race. 
"I would have you know," says the great Apostle of 
the Gentiles, "that the head of every man is Christ." 

Under the pride and vanity of the Nation, under the 
scheming. and frivolity and dishonesty and self- will of 
those who sit in high places in «the earth, under the 
disregard of the law of love by the social, commercial 
and industrial organizations of the city, under every 

Congress of Religions n 



162 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

disobedience of the domestic and individual life is the 
eternal righteousness of Jesus Christ striving for man- 
ifestation, and "straitened until its baptism is ac- 
complished." 

MAN MAY BECOME SINLESS. 

The third great thought in connection with the sal- 
vation of Jesus Christ is that through the complete- 
ness of his redemption there is no necessity nor rea- 
son for any form of sin in the individual. 

A great preacher has told us that Christ is able to 
save "unto the uttermost ends of the earth, to the ut- 
termost limits of time, to the uttermost period of life, 
to the uttermost length of depravity, to the uttermost 
depth of misery, and to the uttermost measure of per- 
fection. " It is when the soul is willing to say "he was 
wounded for my transgressions," that he is in a posi- 
tion to realize that if he will surrender himself unto 
the cross of Jesus and to the teachings of Jesus the 
power of death and hell over him shal 1 forever be broken^ 
and he may live a life of freedom in the righteousness of 
Jesus Christ. It is here that the teaching and the life 
of Jesus are in glorious unity. The cross is not one 
thing and the sermon on the mount another. The 
Kingdom which the Prince of Peace came to establish 
on earth had for its constitution those vital words which 
may be expressed by the one word love; and he him- 
self was the exhibition of what he meant to do as he 
had said, and even to suffer joyfully death for right- 
eousness' sake. The cross was not only the sermon 
on the mount exemplified, but the constitution of the 
Kingdom of God in execution. 

Faith in Christ is not so much the condition as it 
is the evidence of a man's salvation. "Jesus Christ is 
the touchstone of character." And faith in Christ is 



MOHAMETANISM 163 

that quality of righteousness by which a man sees in 
Jesus that which he himself wishes to be, realizes 
that he may be, and determines that he will be. God 
has no way of saving men save by conforming them 
to the image of his son. For a man who sees this, 
believes in the love of God, in the forgiveness of sins, 
and the redemption of the world, and surrenders him- 
self to the mastership of Jesus this is not only a pos- 
sibility but a certainty. 

LOVING RIGHTEOUSNESS MUST TRIUMPH. 

The last thought concerning the salvation of the 
world through Jesus Christ is that the loving right- 
eousness of God must be finally triumphant. We can- 
not conceive of a heaven in which man should not be 
a moral being and free to choose good or evil, as he 
is upon this earth; and the joy of heaven will consist 
largely in that glad fixity of will that shall eternally 
lose itself in God. 

But what a terrible conception comes to us of the 
lost world when we conceive ourselves in spite of all 
the loving kindness and sacrifice of the eternal God, 
as still choosing to go on in sin, determining to re- 
sist his love, conscious of it and yet without the power 
to escape it, saying, "If I make my bed in hell, be- 
hold, thou art there," and yet choosing through the 
ages and ages to turn away from the righteousness of 
God and to pursue a life of indifference and sin. And 
as for our conception of heaven, when the world shall 
obey Jesus Christ, and when all those who have sur- 
rendered unto his heart of love and have been working 
with him throughout the eons, in the establishment 
of righteousness, shall be with him in the new earth, 
no other heaven can be imagined. 



164 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

The redeemed earth shall be at least a part of 
heaven; and the city which John saw, the new Jeru- 
salem, descending out of heaven from God, shall be 
established, and "the tabernacle of God shall be with 
men and he will dwell with them, and they shall be 
his people, and God himself shall be with them and 
be their God. And he shall wipe away every tear from 
their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither 
sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, 
for the former things are passed away." This must 
be the end of the atonement of the life and the death 
of Jesus Christ and the keeping of his commandments, 
which are all summed up in the great name of God, 
which is love. 

With shame I confess that all the disciples naming 
the name of Jesus Christ have not fully done his will 
in his spirit of self-sacrifice and indeed have some- 
times scarcely seemed to apprehend it. If we had it 
is my honest conviction that we could not be gatheied 
here to-day as a "Parliament of Religions," but that 
we would all be praising God together for his won- 
derful salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord." 

THAT REBUKE FROM INDIA AND JAPAN. 

We have already in this parliament been rebuked 
by India and Japan with the charge that Christians 
do not practice the teachings of Jesus. If China has 
not been heard from in words of even keener censure 
it has not been because she has not had good cause, 
as she thinks of the opium curse forced upon her by 
the laws of Christian England, and of the action of the 
corrupt Legislatures and Congresses and Presidents 
who have enacted, or stood by and consented to the 
enacting, of the unjust, selfish, unreasonable, inhu- 



MOHAMETANISM 165 

man, unchristian, and barbaric anti-Chinese laws of 
these Christian United States. 

I might reply by pointing to our hospital walls and 
college towers and myriad ministers of mercy; but I 
forbear. We have done something, but with shame 
and tears I say it that as kingdoms and empires and 
republics, as States and municipalities, and in our 
commercial and industrial organizations, and even in 
a large measure as an organized church, we have not 
been practicing the teachings of Jesus as he said them 
and meant them, as the earliest disciples understood 
and practiced them, and as we must again submit to 
them if we are to be the winners of the world for 
Jesus Christ. 

It is no excuse to say that with Christians the na- 
tion is not a church. That is still further confession of 
comparative failure, for in so far as the Christian 
church and Christian state are not coincident the church 
has come short of the command of the Master; "Go 
ye therefore and disciple all nations, teaching them 
to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded 
you. " 

One of the local papers said the other day that per- 
haps the non-Christian delegates to this parliament 
might be converted to Christianity if they could be 
taken about Chicago blindfolded. 

There have been and are to-day in every Christian 
communion white-souled saints of God who are follow- 
ing "the Lamb whithersoever he goeth" and bearing 
his cross after him, but let us be willing to say plain- 
ly, although with shame, that while we have in the 
life and death and resurrection and teachings of 
Christ, and the descent of the Holy Ghost the 
complete remedy for all the ills of individuals and na- 
tions, we have lacked the power of conquest because 



1 66 

organized Christianity has been saying "Lord, Lord," 
to her Master; and as regards politics and society and 
property and industry has not been doing the things 
that he said. Benjamin Franklin said a generation of 
followers of Jesus who practiced his teachings would 
change the face of the earth. And it is true. When 
evil shall go forth with its deadly poison ready for 
dissemination and find Christians who are meek and 
merciful and poor in spirit and pure in heart and who 
count it all joy to be persecuted for righteousness' 
sake; when it shall dart its venomed tongue at men 
and women who "resist not evil," who "give to him 
that asketh, " and from the borrower do not turn 
away; who "being struck upon one cheek turn the 
other also," who "love their enemies, bless those that 
curse them, do good to them that hate them, and pray 
for them that despitefully use them and persecute 
them," who forgive their debtors because God has for- 
given them; then shall the old serpent find no blood 
that shall be responsive this poisonous touch, and 
sting himself unto the death, even as he did under 
that other cross; which he looked upon as the token 
of the impotence of righteousness, but which was the 
wisdom and the power of God unto salvation and the 
prophecy of the triumph of eternal love. 

WHAT ALL THE WORLD NEEDS. 

And this I will say : That our brethren from across 
the sea have said all we need ask them to say when, 
instead of attacking the life and teachings of Jesus, 
they show that we fail only because we may have 
said, "Lord, Lord," and not done the things that 
he said. And this also I say: That the only hope of 
Asia, as of America, and of Africa, as of Europe, is in 



MOHAMETANISM l6j 

the love of God, and the establishment of his universal 
kingdom of peace, which must be set upon earth and 
which shall have no end. This, my brothers, is all 
that must, is all that can endure, it is the teaching 
of teachings, and the inspiration of inspirations for the 
sons of men. 

God to-day looks down upon such a spectacle of 
sincere desire and of honest purpose to know the truth 
as the groaning and travailing creation has never be- 
fore seen, and the only solution of all the questionings 
and differences and hopes of men must be in the prin- 
ciples of the ruler of the kingdom of God: "Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and 
with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all 
thy strength and thy neighbor as thyself." 

No message of love to God and man has ever been 
in vain. No love of man or God has ever perished 
from the universe; no life of love has ever been or 
ever can be lost. This is the only infinite and only 
eternal message; and this is the reason why the mis- 
sion and the message of Jesus of Nazareth must abide. 
This is the reason that the life of Jesus is eternal and 
that all things must be subdued unto him; for love 
never faileth; but whether there will be prophecies 
they shall be done away; whether there be tongues 
they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall 
be done away. "For we know in part and we prophecy 
in part but when that which is perfect is come, that 
which is in part shall be done away. For now we see 
in a mirror darkly, but then face to face; now we 
know in part, but then shall we know even as also 
we are known." 

For lo, the days are hastening on 

By prophet bards foretold, 
When with the ever circling years 



1 68 THE world's congress of religions 

Comes round the age of gold. 
When peace shall, over all the earth. 

Its ancient splendors fling, 
And the whole world give back the song 

Which now the angels sing. 

And when at last we shall clearly know what now 
we dimly see in Jesus Christ that "love is righteous- 
ness in action;" that mercy is the necessary instru- 
ment of justice, that "good has been the final goal of 
ill; " and that through testing, innocence must have 
been glorified into virtue; when we shall see that God 
is love, and law is gospel and sin has been transformed 
into righteousness, then shall we also see that "there 
is one body and one spirit, even as also we were called 
in one hope of our calling, one Lord, one faith, one 
baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all 
and through all and in all." Then shall we see "that 
unto each one of us was this grace given, according to 
the measure of the gift of Christ, and we shall all at- 
tain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of 
the Son of God; unto a full grown man; unto the 
measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," and 

"Every kindred, every tribe, on this terrestrial ball, 
To him all majesty ascribe and crown him Lord of all," 



CHAPTER VIII 
SWEDENBORGIANISM 

SWEDENBORGIAN DOCTRINE OF THE HUMAN SOUL AND 
HEAVEN EXPOUNDED 

PRESENT AND FUTURE SOUL LIFE 

Rev. Samuel N. Warren touched upon Sweden- 
borgian doctrine in a paper entitled "The Soul and 
Its Future Life." He read as follows: 

It is a doctrine of the New Church that the soul is 
substantial — though not of earthly substance, and is 
the very man; that the body is merely the earthly 
form and instrument of the soul, and that every part 
of the body is produced from the soul, according to its 
likeness, in order that the soul may be fitted to per- 
form its functions in the world during the brief but 
important time that this is the place of man's con- 
scious abode. 

If, as all Christians believe, man is an immortal 
being, created to live on through the endless ages of 
eternity, then the longest life in this world is, com- 
paratively, but as a point, an infinitesimal part of his 
existence. In this view, it is not rational to believe 
that that part of man which is for his brief use in this 
world, only, and is left behind when he passes out of 
this world, is the most real and substantial part of 
him. That is more substantial which is more endur- 

169 



170 

ing, and that is the more real part of a man in which 
his characteristics and his qualities are. All the facts 
and phenomena of life confirm the doctrine that the 
soul is the real man. What makes the quality of a 
man? What gives him character as good or bad, small 
or great, lovable or detestable? Do these qualities 
pertain to the body? Every one knows that they do 
not. But they are the qualities of the man. Then the 
real man is not the body, but is "the living soul." If 
there is immortal life he has not vanished, except form 
mortal and material sight. As between the soul and 
the body, then, there can be no rational question as 
to which is the substantial and which the evanescent 
thing. 

FORM OF THE SOUL. 

Again, if the immortal soul is the real man, and is 
substantial, what must be its form? It cannot be a 
formless vaporous thing and be a man. Can it have 
other than the human form? Reason clearly sees that 
if formless or in any other form he would not be a 
man. The soul of man, or the real man, is a marvel- 
ous assemblage of powers and faculties, of will and 
understanding, and the human form is such as it is be- 
cause it is perfectly adapted to the exercise of these var- 
ious powers and faculties. In other words the soul forms 
itself, under the Divine Maker's hand, into an organ- 
ism by which it can adequately and perfectly put 
forth its wondrous and wonderfully varied powers, 
and bring its purposes into acts. 

The human form is thus an assemblage of organs 
that exactly correspond to and embody and are the 
express image of the various faculties of the soul. 
And there is no organ of the human form the absence 
of which would not hinder and impede the free and 



SWEDENBORGIANISM 171 

efficient action and putting forth of the soul's power. 
And by the human form is not meant merely, nor 
primarily, the organic forms of the material body. 
The faculties are of the soul, and if the soul is the 
man, and endures when the body decays and vanishes, 
it must itself be in a form which is an assemblage of 
organs perfectly adapted and adequate to the exercise 
of its powers, that is, in the human form. The human 
form is then primarily and especially the form of the 
soul — which is the perfection of all forms, as man, at 
his highest, is the consummation and fullness of all 
loving and intelligent attributes. 

WHEN THE SOUL TAKES HUMAN FORM. 

But when does the soul itself take on its human 
form? Is it not until the death of the body? Mani- 
festly, if it is the very form of the soul, the soul can- 
not exist without it, and it is put on in and by the 
fact of its creation and the gradual development of 
its powers. It could have no other form and be a hu- 
man soul. Its organs are the necessary organs of its 
faculties and powers, and these are clothed with their 
similitudes in dead material forms, animated by the 
soul for temporary use in the material world. The soul 
is omnipresent in the material body, not by diffusion, 
formlessly, but each organ of the soul is within and 
is the soul of the corresponding organ of the body. 

That the immortal soul is the very man involves the 
eternal preservation of his identity. For in the soul 
are the distinguishing qualities that constitute the 
individuality of a man — all those certain characteris- 
tics, affectional and intellectual which make him such 
or such a man, and distinguish and differentiate him 
from all other men. He remains, therefore, the same 



172 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

man to all eternity. He may become more and more, 
to endless ages, an angel of light — even as here a man 
may advance greatly in wisdom and intelligence and 
yet is always the same man. This doctrine of the 
soul involves also the permanency of established char- 
acter. The life in this world is the period of character 
building. It has been very truthfully said that a man 
is a bundle of habits. What manner of man he is 
depends on what his manner of life has been. 

EFFECT OF HABIT ON THE SOUL. 

If evil and vicious habits are continued through 
life they are fixed and confirmed and become of the 
very life, so that the man loves and desires no other 
life, and does not wish to — will not be led out of them 
— because he loves the practice of them. On the other 
hand, if from childhood a man has been inured to 
virtuous habits, these habits become fixed and estab- 
lished and of his very soul and life. In either case 
the habits thus fixed and confirmed are of the immor- 
tal soul and constitute its permanent character. The 
body, as to its part, has been but the pliant instru- 
ment of the souL 

With respect to the soul's future life the first import- 
ant consideration is what sort of a world it will in- 
habit. If we have shown good reasons for believing 
the doctrine that the soul is not a something formless, 
vague and shadowy, but is itself an organic human 
form, substantial, and the very man, then it must in- 
habit a substantial and very real world. It is a gross 
fallacy of the senses, but there is no substance but 
matter, and nothing substantial but what is material. 
Is not God, the Divine, Omnipotent Creator of all 
things, substantial? Can Omnipotence be an attri- 



i 



SWEDENBORGIANISM 173 

bute of that which has no substance and no form? Is 
such an existence conceivable? But He is not ma- 
terial and not visible or cognizable by any mortal 
sense. Yet we know that He is substantial; for it is 
manifest in His wondrous and mighty works. There 
is," then, spiritual substance. And of such substance 
must be the world wherein the soul is eternally to 
dwell. It is the reality of the spiritual world that 
makes this world real — just as it is the reality of the 
soul that makes the human body a reality and a possi- 
bility. As there could be no body without the soul 
there could be no Natural world without the Spiritual. 

HEAVEN SUBSTANTIAL AND LOVELY. 

Not only is that world substantial, but it must be a 
world of surprising loveliness and beauty. It has justly 
been considered one of the most beneficent manifesta- 
tions of the divine love and wisdom that this beautiful 
world that we briefly inhabit is so wonderfully adapted 
to all man's wants and to call into exercise and gratify 
his every faculty and good desire. And when he 
leaves this temporary abode, a man with all his facul- 
ties exalted and refined by freedom from the incum- 
brance of the flesh — an incumbrance which we are often 
very conscious of — will he not enter a world of beauty 
exceeding the loveliest aspects of this? The soul is 
human and the world in which it is to dwell is adapted 
to human life ; and it would not be adapted to human 
life if it did not adequately meet and answer to the 
soul's desires. Is it reasonable that this material 
world should be so full of life and loveliness and 
beauty, when "Nature spreads for every sense a feast, " 
to gratify every exalted faculty of the soul, and not 
the spiritual world wherein the soul is to abide for- 
ever? 



174 THE world's congress of religions 

And the life of that world is human life. The same 
laws of life and happiness obtain there that govern 
here, because they are grounded in human nature. 
Man is a social being, and everywhere, in that world 
as in this, desires and seeks the companionship of 
those that are congenial to him — that is, who are of 
similar quality to himself. Men are thus mutually 
drawn together by spiritual affinity. This is the law 
of association here, but it is less perfectly operative 
in this world because there is much dissimulation 
among men, so that they often do not appear to be 
what they really are, and thus by false and deceptive 
appearances the good and the evil are often associated 
together. 

STATE IN HEAVEN. 

And so it is for a time and in a measure In the first 
state and region into which men come when they en- 
ter the spiritual world. They go into that world as they 
are, and are at first in a mixed state, as in this world. 
This continues until the real character is clearly mani- 
fest, and good and evil are separated, and they are 
thus prepared for their final and permanent associa- 
tion and abode. They who, in the world, have made 
some real effort, and beginning to live a good life, but 
have evil habits not yet overcome, remain there until 
they are entirely purified of evil, and are fitted for 
some society of heaven, and those who inwardly are 
evil and have outwardly assumed a virtuous garb, re- 
main until their dissembled goodness is cast off and 
their inward character becomes outwardly manifest. 
When this state of separation is complete there can 
be no successful dissimulation — the good and the evil 
are seen and known as such and the law of spiritual 
affinity becomes perfectly operative by their own free 



SWEDENBORGIANISM 175 

volition and choice. Then the evil and the good be- 
come entirely separated into their congenial societies. 
The various societies and communities of the good 
thus associated constitute heaven and those of the evil 
constitute hell — not by any arbitrary judgment of an 
angry God, but of voluntary choice, by the perfect and 
unhindered operation of the law of human nature that 
leads men to prefer and seek the companionship of 
those most congenial to themselves. 

As regards the permanency of the state of those 
who by established evil habit are fixed and determined 
in their love of evil life, it is not of the Lord's will, 
but of their own. We are taught in his Holy Word 
that he is ever "gracious and full of compassion." 
He would that they should turn from their evil ways 
and live, but they will not. 

WHY MEN ARE BAD IN THE OTHER LIFE. 

There is no moment, -in this or in the future life, 
when the infinite mercy of the Lord would not that 
an evil man should turn from his evil course and live 
a virtuous and upright and happy life; but they will 
not in that world for the same reason that they would 
not in this, because when evil habits are once fixed 
and confirmed they love them and will not turn from 
them. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the 
leopard his spots? Then may they also do good that 
are accustomed to do evil." Heaven is a heaven of 
man and the life of heaven is human life. The con- 
ditions of life in that exalted state are greatly differ- 
ent from the conditions here, but it is human life 
adapted to such transcendent conditions, and the laws 
of life in that world, as we have seen, are the same as 
in this. Man was created to be a free and willing 



I76 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

agent of the Lord to bless his kind. His true happi- 
ness comes, not in seeking happiess for himself, but 
in seeking to promote the happiness of others. Where 
all are animated by this desire, all are mutually and 
reciprocally blest. 

Such a state is heaven, whether measurably in this 
woild or full) 7 and perfectly in the next. Then must 
there be useful ways in heaven by which they can 
contribute to each other's happiness. And of such 
kind will be the employments of heaven, for there 
must be useful employments. There could be no hap- 
piness without to beings who are designed and formed 
for usefulness to others. What the employments are 
in that exalted condition we cannot well know except 
as some of them are revealed to us, and of them we 
have faint and feeble conception. But undoubtedly 
one of them is attendance upon men in this world. 

Such in general, according to the revealed doctrines 
of the New Church, is the future life of the mortal 
souls of men. 

Chairman Mercer said: 

There are abundant reasons why the New Church 
should enter cordially and actively into preparation 
for a world's congress of religions. The youngest of 
the historic faiths it reaches back to embrace the old- 
est, and to complete and crown them all with the final 
revelation which restored their pristine wisdom and 
divine sanctions. The Lord always makes use of men 
as his instruments on earth for the revelation of his 
truth to mankind. The whole course of his providence 
in this respect has been to reveal at the great crisis of 
the church, through suitable men, the truth, needed 
for the institution of a new era of the church. And 
we believe that, even as Christ promised to come again 



SWEDENBORGIANISM 177 

to men, he has accomplished his second advent in the 
opening of the spiritual sense and divine meaning of 
the written word through the human instrumentality 
of Emanuel Swedenborg. The New Church, therefore, 
stands for the new revelation from the Lord, not in 
new sacred scriptures, but in the opening of the 
spiritual sense and genuine meaning of the word given 
in the old and new testament. The New Church is 
wide as human need and universal and impartial as 
divine love. It transcends sect and nation, and ex- 
tends by invisible chains of influx from society to 
society, binding all who love the Lord and work right- 
eousness into one grand man, of which the divine man 
is the transforming soul 



Congress of Religion ™ 



CHAPTER IX 

JUDAISM 

Dr. Isaac M. Wise of Cincinnati read a paper on 
"The Theology of Judaism." He began his address 
by saying there could be no theology of Judaism. 

We modern latitudinarians and syncretists maintain 
that we need more religion and less theology or no 
theology at all — deeds and no creeds — for religion is 
undefinable and purely subjective; theology defines 
and casts free sentiments into dictatorial words. Re- 
ligion unites and theology divides the human family 
not seldom into hostile factions. The religion of Is- 
rael is based upon the four postulates of all theology 
— the existence of God, revelation and worship, con- 
science, ethics and esthetics, and immortality — and 
in justification of its extensions and expansions, its 
derivation of doctrine and dogmas from the main pos- 
tulates, its entire development, it points to its sources 
and traditions and at various times also to the standard 
of reason. The theology of Judaism as a systematic 
structure must solve the problems of life, of time, and 
eternity, on the basis of Israel God-cognition. This 
being the highest in man's cognition, the solution of 
all problems upon this basis, ecclesiastical, ethical, or 
in eschatology, must be final in theology, provided 
the judgment which leads to the solution is not erro- 
neous. And erroneous judgment from true antecedents 
is possible. Is such cases the first safeguard is in the 

178 



JUDAISM 179 

field of reason, and the second, though not secondary, 
is an appeal to Holy Writ and its best commentators. 
Wherever these two authorities agree, reason and Holy 
Writ, that the solution of any problem, from the basis 
of Israel God-cognition, is correct, certitude is estab- 
lished and the ultimate solution is found. This is the 
structure of a systematic theology. Israel's God-cog- 
nition is the sub-stratum, the substance; Holy Writ 
and the standard of reason are the desiderata, and the 
faculty of reason is the apparatus to solve the prob- 
lems, which in their unity are the theology of Juda- 
ism, higher than which none can be. 

JUDAISM AND THE SOCIAL QUESTIONS. 

Rabi Berkowitz sent the following paper to be read 
for him. 

Here, in the assembly of so many of her spiritual 
children, in the midst of the religions which have 
received from her nurture and loving care, Judaism, 
the fond mother, may lift up her voice and be heard 
with reverent and affectionate attention. 

It has been asked: "What has Judaism to say on 
the social question?" 

From the earliest days she has set the seal of sanc- 
tity on all that question involves. From the very first 
she proclaimed the dignity, nay the duty of labor by 
postulating God, the creator, at work and setting forth 
the divine example unto all men for imitation in the 
command: "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy 
work." Industry is thus hallowed by religion and 
religion in turn is made to receive the homage of in- 
dustry in the fulfillment of the ordinance of Sabbath 
rest. 



l8o THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Judaism thus came into the world to live in the 
world, to make the world more heavenly. Though 
aspiring unto the heavens she has always trod firmly 
upon the earth, abiding with men in their habitations, 
ennobling their toils, dignifying their pleasures. 

Through all the centuries of her sorrowful life she 
has steadfastly striven with her every energy to 
solve, according to the eternal law of the eternal 
righteous, every new phase of the ever-recurring prob- 
lems in the social relationships of man. 

When the son of Adam, hiding in the dismal covert 
of some primeval forest, heard the accusing voice of 
conscience in bitter tones upbraid him, he defiantly 
made reply : "Am I my brother's keeper?" Then the 
social conflict began. To the question then asked, 
Judaism made stern reply in branding with the guilt 
mark of Cain every transgression of human right. 

PLEADING FOR THE OPPRESSED. 

From then until now, unceasingly through all the 
long and trying centuries, she has never wearied in 
lifting up her voice to denounce wrong and plead for 
right, to brand the oppressor and uplift the oppressed. 
Pages upon pages of her scriptures, folio upon folio 
of her massive literature are devoted to the social 
question in its whole broad range, are full of maxims, 
precepts, injunctions, ordinances, and laws aiming to 
secure the right adjustment of the affairs of men in the 
practical concerns of every day. 

In the family, in the community, in the state, in all 
the forms of social organization inequalities between 
man and man have arisen which have evoked the con- 
tentions of the strong and the weak, the rich and the 
poor, the high and the low. Against the iniquity of, 
self-seeking Judaism has ever protested most loudly 



JUDAISM l8l 

and none the less so against the errors and evils of an 
unjust self-sacrifice. "Love thyself," she says; this 
is natural, this axiomatic, but remember, it is never 
of itself a moral injunction. Egotism as an exclusive 
motive is entirely false, but altruism is not therefore 
exclusively and always right. It likewise may defeat 
itself, may work injury and lead to crime. The worthy 
should never be sacrificed for the unworthy. It is a 
sin for you to give your hard-earned money to a vag- 
abond and thus propagate vice as much as it is sin- 
ful to withhold your aid from the struggling genius 
whose opportunity may yield to the world undreamed 
of benefits." In this reciprocal relation between the 
responsibility of the individual for society, and of soci- 
ety for the individual lies one of Judaism's prime 
characteristics. She has pointed the ideal in the con- 
flict of social principles by her golden precept: "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. I am God." (Le- 
viticus xix. 18). According to this precept she has so 
arranged the inner affairs of the family that the purity, 
the sweetness and tenderness of the homes of her 
children have become proverbial. "Honor thy father 
and thy mother" (Ex. xx. 12.) ; "the widow and the 
orphan thou shalt not oppress" (Ex. xxii. 22.); "be- 
fore the hoary head shalt thou rise and shalt revere 
the Lord thy God" (Lev. xix. 32.); "and thou shalt 
teach them diligently unto thy children" (Deut. vi. 
7.) — these and hundreds of like injunctions have cre- 
ated the institutions of loving and tender care which 
secure the training and nurture, the education and 
and rearing of the child, which sustain the man 
and woman in rectitude in the path of life, and 
with the staff of a devout faith guide their downward 
steps in old age to the resting place over which the 
star of immortality sheds its radiant light. 



l82 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

CHARITY AND JUSTICE. 

Judaism sets education before all things else and 
knows but one word for charity — ZedakaJi, i. e., justice. 
She has made the home the basis of the social struct- 
ure, and has sought to supply the want of a home as a 
just due to every creature, guarding each with this 
motive from the cradle to the grave. 

With her sublime maxim, "Love thy neighbor as 
thyself — I am God, " Judaism set up the highest ideal 
of society as a human brotherhood under the care of a 
divine fatherhood. According to this ideal Judaism 
has sought, passing beyond the environments 
of the family, to regulate the affairs of human 
society at large. "This is the book of the gen- 
erations of men" was the caption of Genesis (v., i.) 
indicating as the Rabbins taught, that all men without 
distinction of race, caste, or other social differences 
are entitled to equal rights as being equally the children 
of one Creator. The social ideal was accordingly the 
sanctification of men unto the noblest in the injunction 
to the "priest-people;" "Holy shall ye be, for I, the 
Lord your God, am holy. "[Ex. xix., 22.] 

The freedom of the people was the prime necessary 
consequence of this precept. 

Grandly and majestically the Mosaic legislation swept 
aside all the fallacies which had given the basis to the 
heartless degradation of man by his fellow man. Sla- 
very stood forever condemned when Israel went forth 
from the bondage of Egypt. Labor then, for the first 
time, asserted its freedom and assumed the dignity 
which at last the present era is vindicating with such 
fervor and power. 

Judaism established the freedom to select one's own 
calling in life irrespective of birth or other conditions. 



JUDAISM 183 

For each one a task according to his capacities, was 
the rule of life. The laborer was never so honored 
as in the Hebrew commonwealth. The wage system 
was inaugurated to secure to each one the fruits of 
his toil. It was over the work of the laboring man 
that the master had control, not over the man. In- 
deed, the evils of the wage system were scrupulously 
guarded against, in that the employer was charged by 
the law, as by conscience, to have regard for the phys- 
ical, moral, and spiritual well-being of his employes 
and their families. (Lev. xix., 13; Talmud, Tractate, 
Kiddushin, 20, a; Sifra, B'har, ch. 7; Maimonides' 
"Abadim," 259). 

To the solution of all the problems which under 
varying conditions of the different lands and different 
ages always have risen and always will arise the Jew- 
ish legislation in its inception and development affords 
a extraordinary contribution. It has studiously avoided 
the fallacies of the extremists of the communistic 
and individualistic economic doctrines. Thus it was 
taught: He that saith, "What is mine is thine, and 
what is thine is mine" [communism,] he is void of a 
moral concept. He that saith, "What is mine is mine, 
and what is thine is thine," he has the wisdom of 
prudence ; but some of the sages declare that this 
teaching, too rigidly held, oft leads to barbarous cru- 
elties. He that saith, "What is mine is thine, and 
what is thine shall remain thine," he has the wisdom 
of the righteous. He that says, "What is mine is 
mine, and what is thine is also mine," he is utterly 
Godless. (Pirque Aboth, v. 13.) 

Judaism has calmly met the wild outbursts of ex- 
tremists of anti-poverty and nihilistic types with the 
simple confession of the fact which is a resultant of 
the imperfections of human nature: "The needy will 



184 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

not be wanting in the land." (Deut. xv., 11.) The 
brotherly care of the needy is the common solicitude 
of the Jewish legislators and people in every age. 

Their neglect or abuse evokes the wrath of prophet, 
sage, and councilor with such a fury that even to-day 
none but the morally dead can withstand their elo- 
quence. The effort of all legislation and instruction 
was directed to a harmonization of these two ex- 
tremes. 

The freedom of the individual was recognized as in- 
volving the development of unlike capacities. From 
this freedom all progress springs. But all progress 
must be made, not for the selfish advantage of the indi- 
vidual alone, but for the common welfare "that thy 
brother with thee may live." (Lev. xxv. 36.) There- 
fore private property in land or other possessions 
was regarded as only a trust because everything is 
God's, the Father's to be acquired by industry and 
perseverance by the individual, but to be held by him 
only to the advantage of all. To this end were estab- 
lished all the laws and institutions of trade, of indus- 
try, and of the system of inheritance, the code of 
rentals, the jubilee year, that every fiftieth year brought 
back the land which had been sold into the original 
patrimony, the seventh, or Sabbatical year in which 
the lands were fallow all produce free to the consumer, 
the tithings of field and 'flock, the loans to the brother 
in need without usury, and the magnificent system of 
obligatory charities which still holds the germ of wis- 
dom of all modern scientific charity, "Let the poor 
glean in the fields" (Lev. xix., 10), and gather through 
his own efforts what he needs; i. e., give to each one 
not support but the opportunity to secure his own 
support. 

A careful study of these Mosaic-Talmudic institu- 



JUDAISM 185 

tions is bound more and more to be recognized as of 
untold worth to the present in the solution of the so- 
cial question. True, these codes were adapted to the 
needs of a peculiar people, homogeneous in character, 
living under certain conditions and environments which 
probably do not exist in exactly the same order any- 
where. We cannot use the statutes, but their aim and 
spirit, their motive and method we must adopt in the 
solution of the social problem even to-day. 

NEVER HEARD IN JUDEA. 

Consider that the cry of woe which is ringing in our 
ears now was never heard in Judea. Note that in all 
the annals of Jewish history there are no records of 
the revolts of slaves such as those which afflicted the 
world's greatest empire, and under Spartacus threat- 
ened the national safety, nor any uprisings like those 
of the plebeians of Rome, the Demoi of Athens or the 
Helots of Sparta; no wild scenes like the Paris com- 
mune; no processions of hungry men, women and 
children crying for bread like those of London, Chi- 
cago, and Denver. Pauperism, that spectre of our 
country, never haunted the ancient land of Judea. 
Tramps were not known there. 

Because the worst evils which afflict the social body 
to-day were unknown under the Jewish legislation we 
may claim that we have here the pattern of what was 
the most successful social system that the world has 
ever known. Therefore does Judaism lift up her voice 
and call back her spiritual children that in her bosom 
they may find comfort and rest. "Come back to the 
cradle of the world where wisdom first spake," she 
cries, "and learn again the message of truth that for 
all times and unto all generations was proclaimed 



i86 

through Israel's precept: 'Love thy neighbor as thy- 
self, for I am God.'" (Lev. xix., 18.) The hotly 
contested social questions of our civilization are to be 
settled nither according to the ideas of the capitalist 
nor those of the socialist, the communist, the anarchist 
or the nihilist, but simply and only according to the 
eternal laws of morality, of which Sinai is the loftiest 
symbol. 

The guiding principles to all true social economy 
are embodied in the simple lessons of Judaism. As 
the world has been redeemed from idolatry and its 
moral corruption by the vital force of Jewish ideas, 
so can it likewise be redeemed from social debasement 
and chaos. Character is the basic precept of Judaism. 
It claims, as the modern philosopher declares (Her- 
bert Spencer), that "there is no political alchemy by 
which you can get golden conduct out of leaden in- 
stincts." 

Whatever the social system, it will fail unless the 
conscience of men and women are quick to heed the 
imperative orders of duty and to the obligations and 
responsibilities of power and ownership. The old 
truth of righteousness so emphatically and rigorously 
insisted on from the first by Judaism, must be the new 
truth in every changing phase of economic and indus- 
trial life. Only thus can the social question be solved. 
In her insistence on this doctrine Judaism retains her 
place in the van of the religions of humanity. 

Let the voice of the mother of religion be heard in 
the parliament of all religions; may the voice of the 
mother not plead in vain ; may the hearts of the na- 
tions be touched and all the unjust and cruel restric- 
tions of ages be removed from Israel in all lands, so 
that the emancipated may go in increasing colonies 
back to the native pursuits of agriculture and the in- 



JUDAISM 187 

dustries so long denied them; may the colonies of 
the United Sates of America, Argentine, and Palestine 
be an earnest to the world of the purity of Israel's 
motives ; may the agricultural and industrial schools 
maintained by the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the 
Baron de Hirsch trust, and the various Jewish organiza- 
tions of the civilized world from Palestine to California 
prove Israel's ardor for the honors of industry; may 
the wisdom of free schools, the counsel of her sages, 
the inspiration of her law-givers, the eloquence of her 
prophets, the rapture of her psalmists, the earnestness 
of all her advocates, increasingly win the reverent at- 
tention of humanity to, and fix them unswervingly 
upon, the everlasting laws of righteousness, which 
she has set as the only basis for the social structure. 

CHRIST NOT CRUCIFIED BY JEWS. 

Rabbi Joseph Silverman was introduced and spoke 
briefly, as follows: 

One of the keenest and most injurious evils that can 
befall a man or a people is to be misunderstood — per- 
haps worse to be misrepresented. The individual who 
has experienced both knows the vital sufferings that 
were his. To worship truth and be accused of false- 
hood; to be religiously virtuous and be charged with 
vice; to aspire to heaven and by the world be con- 
signed to purgatory; to be robbed of one's identity and 
be clad in the garb of another inferior being; to see 
one's principles distorted, every motive questioned ; 
one's words misquoted, every act misunderstood — one's 
whole life misrepresented, and to be a caricature in the 
eyes of all men, without the power of redress, is to 
suffer all the unmitigated pangs of mortification. 



The very fact that the Jews once formed a sep- 
arate race, and a distinct nation, and still maintain 
themselves as an independent religious community, 
has created prejudices from which have grown up also 
many errors regarding this people in other directions 
than those already mentioned. 

Rabbi Silverman then went on to point out some 
of the specific errors which existed in the popular 
mind concerning the Jews. He said they were ac- 
cused of exclusiveness and clanishness, whereas they 
are the most gregarious and broadly social — the only 
remnant of clanishness being that which was com- 
pelled by the conduct of those who either purposely 
or ignorantly persisted in thus misunderstanding them. 
The Jew was maliciously represented as a consumer, 
as distinguished from a producer, when by birthright 
he was a tiller of the soil, and had been compelled 
through centuries of persecution to become a trafficker 
in moneys and gems. And notwithstanding the age 
of the persecution the Jew was to-day found in all 
departments of agriculture and the mechanical arts, 
while his contributions to music and art and literature 
were notable. The same character of error concern- 
ing the Jew extended to his religious faith, and this 
largely because of the prevailing error that the Jews 
crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Rabbi Silverman con- 
cluded his paper as follows: 

We deplore and condemn the crucifixion of Jesus 
of Nazareth. He was without doubt one of nature's 
noblemen, pure in sentiment and action, a great leader 
and reformer of men, and as such fell a victim to the 
fanaticism and jealous power of Rome. His was the 
execution of an innocent man. 



JUDAISM 189 

When the truth is once known and the Jew is placed 
in the right before the world we believe prejudice will 
be removed, errors corrected, and persecution will 
cease and love prevail. 

We are worshiping the same God, the creator and 
preserver of us all. In the words of Malachi, "Have 
we not all one Father? Has not one God created us 
all? Why shall we deal unjustly one against the 
ether?" May truth prevail, may love reign supreme. 
May that brotherhood of man be speedily realized in 
which there shall be no distinction as to nationality 
or creed. 



CHAPTER X 

ARMENIANS AND THE GREEK CHURCH 

"The Spirit and Mission of the Apostolic Church 
of Armenia" was the subject of the following paper 
by Ohannes Chatschumau: 

According to the general testimony of historians 
Christianity was introduced into Armenia in the first 
century. In the year 34 A. D., the Apostle Thaddeus 
went to this country, and in the year 60 A. D., Bar- 
tholomew followed. They preached the gospel and 
were martyred. These apostles were therefore the 
founders of the Armenian church. Besides these, two 
other apostles, Simeon and Judah, preached in Arme- 
nia. But Christianity did not bcome the established 
religion until the year 302 A. D., although during 
this interval thousands of Armenians became martyrs 
to Christianity. In that year Saint Gregory Illumi- 
nator enlightened the entire Armenian nation, and 
Christianity became the religion of the king as well as 
of the people. In the Armenian language to "enlight- 
en" means to "Christianize." Whether, therefore, we 
date the establishment of Christianity from the first 
century, or at the beginning of the fourth, the Arme- 
nian church remains the oldest Christian church in 
the world. 

Because of its past it has a peculiar place among 
other churches. While the church is only one element 
in the lives of other nations, an element sometimes 

190 



ARMENIANS AND THE GREEK CHURCH igi 

strong, sometimes less strong, in Armenia it embraces 
the whole life of the nation. There are two different 
ideals, one for Christianity, the other for nationality. 
These two ideals are united. The Armenians love 
their country because they love Christianity. Church 
and fatherland have been almost synonymous in their 
tongues. 

INDEPENDENT AND NATIONAL. 

The construction of the Armenian church is simple 
and apostolic. It is independent and national. The 
head is called the patriarch catholicas of all Armenians 
in whatever part of the world they may be. He is 
elected by the representatives of the nation and clergy 
in Etchmidzin at the foot of Mount Ararat. Any Ar- 
menian, even a layman can become head of the church 
if the general assembly finds him worthy of this high 
office. Since Armenia has been divided among the 
three powers — Turkey, Russia, and Persia — the elec- 
tion of the catholicas is confirmed by the Russian em- 
peror. The bishops are elected by the people of each 
province and are anointed by the catholicas. The 
ordinary clergy are elected by each parish. The parish 
is free in its election, and neither bishop nor catholi- 
cas can assign a priest to a parish against its wish. 
Each church being free in its home work they are all 
bound with one another and so form a unity. 

The people share largely in the work of the church. 
All assemblies which have to decide general questions, 
even dogmatic matters, are gathered from both people 
and clergy. The clergy exists for the people and not 
the people for the clergy. 

The Armenian clergy have always been pioneers in 
the educational advancement of the nation. They have 
been the bringers-in of European civilization to their 



192 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

people. From the fifth century to this very day, young 
men intended for the priesthood are sent to the Occi- 
dent to study, in order that Christianity and civiliza- 
tion may go hand in hand. The country owes every- 
thing to this clergy. They have been first in danger 
and first in civilization. 

The spirit of the Armenian church is tolerant. A 
characteristic feature of Armenians, even while they 
were heathen, was that they were cosmopolitan in re- 
ligious matters. Armenia in early ages was an America 
for the oppressed of other lands. From Assyria, as 
we read in the Bible, in the book of Kings, Adramelik 
and Landssar escaped to Armenia. From China. Hin- 
dostan and Palestine they went thither, carrying their 
religious thoughts and their idols which they wor- 
shiped side by side with the Armenian gods. Chris- 
tianity has entirely changed the political and moral life 
of Armenia, but the tolerant spirit has ever remained. 
For more than fifteen hundred years she has been per- 
secuted for her faith and for conscience's sake, and 
yet she has never been a religious persecutor. She 
calls no church heterodox. The last catholicas, Makar 
the First, said once to me: "My son, do not call any 
church heterodox. All churches are equal, and every 
body is saved by his own faith." Every day in our 
churches prayers are offered for all those who call on 
the name of the Most High in sincerity. The Armenian 
church does not like religious disputes. She has de- 
fended the ideals of Christianity more with the red 
blood of her children than with big volumes of con- 
troversies. She has always insisted on the brother- 
hood of all Christians. Nerces, archbishop of Zanm- 
bron, Cicilicie, who was called the second Apostle 
Paul, in the twelfth century defended and practiced 
tfe§ very ideals and equality of all churches ancl th§ 



ARMENIANS AND THE GREEK CHURCH 193 

brotherhood of all men which the most liberal clergy- 
men of this century believe in. 

PURIFYING INFLUENCES. 

The Armenian church has a great literature, espec- 
ially in sacred lyrics, which has had a vast influence 
over the people. 

But the purifying influence of our church appears 
chiefly in the family, in no land is the family life 
purer. For an Armenian the family is sacred. Eth- 
nologists ask with reason: "How can we explain the 
continued existence of the Armenian nation through 
the fire and sword of 4,000 years?" The solution of 
this riddle is in the pure family life. This is the 
anchor by which the storm-beaten has been held. It 
is a singular fact that Armenia never had, even in her 
heathen times, either polygamy or slavery, althoug-h 
always surrounded by nations who followed these evil 
practices. 

Women in Armenia have always had a distinguished 
place in the church. The first Christian martyr among 
women in the whole world was an Armenian girl — 
Sandooct, the beautiful daughter of King Sanstrook. 
In the fifth century, as says the historian Equishe, 
the songs of the Armenian women were the psalms, 
and their daily readings the gospel. 

Geographically, Armenia is the bridge between Asia 
and Europe. All the nations of Asia have traveled 
over this bridge. One cannot show a single year in 
the long past through which she has enjoyed peace. 
Every one of her stones has been baptized many times 
with the sacred blood of martyrs. Her rivers have 
flowed, not with water, but with the blood and tears 
of the Armenian nation. Surrounded by non-Christian 

Congress of Religions 13 



194 THE world's congress of religions 

and anti-Christian peoples, she has kept her Christian- 
ity and her independent national church. Through 
the darkness of the ages she has been a bright torch 
in the orient of Christianity and civilization. 

All her neighbors have passed away — the Assy- 
rians, the Babylonians, the Parthians, and the Per- 
sian fire worshipers. Armenia herself has lost every- 
thing; crown and scepter are gone; peace and happi- 
ness have departed; to her remains only the cross, 
the sign of martyrdom. Yet the Armenian church still 
lives. Why? To fulfill the work she was called to 
do — to spread civilization among the peoples of this 
side of Asia — and she has still vitality enough to ful- 
fill this mission. For this struggling and aspiring 
church we crave your sympathy. To help the Arme- 
nian church is to help humanity. 

GREEK CHURCH. 

Dr. Phiambolis, of the Greek church, presented the 
following paper: 

I beg your pardon if I make any mistakes, not being 
well versed in the English language. In coming here 
as a delegate to the Religious Congress 1 did not come 
to discuss Christianity and the Christian truths, nor 
the existence of a God, because I think I would attack 
your Christian conscience. All the Christian delegates 
of this parliament have spoken enough of Christianity 
and the existence of a God, and I think a repetition 
of it would be vain labor. 

I do not come to teach you a new gospel, because 
our gospel is always new. Its truths are unchangeable 
and eternalj the rudder of the action of every Chris- 
tian, the guide for salvation. 



ARMENIANS AND THE GREEK CHURCH I95 

I come into your presence as a representative of the 
truths of the Orthodox church, and to greet you with 
our love. 

But believing is not the question — believing rightly 
is the question. 

The philosophical systems have been proved unable 
to find the truth and satisfy the requests of the human 
hearts, and the results of those philosophical systems 
were a ridiculous polytheism, when a man of Judea 
preached, saying, "I am the Truth, I am the Light of 
the World. I will send to the world the Holy Ghost, 
the Spirit of the Truth, and He will say every truth." 

Now let us examine. Has that man said the truth? 
Two thousand years have passed almost from that 
epoch and all the nations who came in connection 
with his preaching say "Yes," but let us continue to 
examine whether this truth remained pure and clean 
and unmixed with some errors. 

THE FIRST CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

I read the scriptures and I see that our Jesus Christ 
sent his Holy Ghost, the spirit of the truth, to all the 
disciples without exception. The apostles were the 
first Christian church with the spirit of truth. But 
the apostles sometimes disputed some religious ques- 
tion, and after the disputation they decided it by 
leaving it to the apostles and elders of the church. 
Has the orthodox church kept this example of the 
apostles? Let us look at the history of the church. 
The Jews of Judea, according to the prophets, were 
waiting for a Messiah. Jesus Christ was to the Jews 
a scandal, and to the Greeks a foolishness. The 
apostles began at first their preaching between their 
compatriots, the Jews, but their followers were few. 



196 THE world's congress oe religions 

Then they, and especially St. Paul, applied to the na- 
tions, and especially to the Greeks of Asia Minor; 
after to the Thessalonians and Philippians of Mace- 
donia, to Athenians, Corinthians, and, at last, to 
Romans, or to the Jews and Greeks of Rome. 

Some Greek Christian churches had been established, 
and for that reason the evangelists wrote their gospel 
in the Greek language as well as the other disciples 
wrote their epistles. Christianity met great opposi- 
tion. It had to fight against all the religions of that 
epoch; against the prejudices, the philosophical sys- 
tems; against tyranny, against all the world, and to 
conquer. The emperors of Rome armed themselves 
against it. But the Christian idea overcame, and the 
Christianity became the religion of the Roman states. 
Meanwhile, the opposition continued under other 
shapes of false Christian philosophy. Clouds of heresies 
troubled the ceremony of the church which cut them 
off by the weapon of the true doctrine, by the weapon 
of the Holy Ghost, according to the example of the 
apostle, and they guarded the Christian doctrine from 
error. 

EAST AND WEST SEPARATED. 

Unfortunately the human interest, the human proud 
and politic, unknown to the united church, entered 
at the ninth century the sacred inclosure of the church 
and a great schism and division followed between 
the east and the west. This division resulted in the 
prevention of Christianism and the progress of Mo- 
hammedanism, whose motto is, "Kill the infidels," 
because everyone who is not a Mohammedan, accord- 
ing to the Koran of the prophet, is an infidel, is a dog. 
It is not my desire to speak about Turkish tyranny, 
but I will say a few words concerning the Christian 



ARMENIANS AND THE GREEK CHURCH 197 

kings of Europe. The people of the orient suffered, 
and still suffer; the Christian virgins are dishonored 
by the followers of the moral prophet, and the life of 
a Christian is not considered as precious as that of a 
dog. But the kings of Europe, the Christian kings, 
thinking only of themselves and their interests, see 
from afar this barbarous state of affairs, but without 
sympathy, and for that reason I stated that politics 
had entered the church. 

Regarding the church, the orthodox church, we are 
true to the examples of the apostles and the paradigma 
of the synods, we follow the same road in religious 
questions, and after discussion do not accept new dog- 
ma without the agreement of the whole ecumenical 
council ; neither do we adopt any dogma other than 
that of the one united and undivided church whose 
doctrine has been followed until to-day. The ortho- 
dox Apostolic Catholic church contains many different 
nations, and every one of them uses its own language 
in the mass and litany and governs its church inde- 
pendently, but all these nations have the same faith. 

In finishing my narration, or rather my short exhi- 
bition of my church, I raise my eyes on high and 
pray: O, thou Holy Ghost, the spirit of the truth, 
King of kings, thou who illuminated the holy apos- 
tles, thou who illuminated your saints apostolical, 
united and undivided church and synods; O, thou 
Holy Ghost, who illuminates every man coming into 
the world; thou who illuminated Columbus, the hero, 
to give the whole continent to humanity; thou who 
illuminated those glorious people of America to fight 
against slavery and for freedom, and they conquered; 
thou who illuminated the eminent presidents of this 
Religious Congress, from which an immense light will 
be spread over all the world, and such a great benev- 



RELIGIONS 

olence for the gospel and humanity are expected; O, 
Thou Holy Ghost, hear my humble prayer, and give 
us as soon as possible that all the men of the earth 
may become a flock under a shepherd, and our Jesus 
Christ the only head of the church. 



CHAPTER XI 
UNITARIANISM AND UNIVERSALISM 

The Unitarian Church Congress was held in Wash- 
ington hall. A presentation of its doctrines was 
made by eminent speakers and writers. The vener- 
able Edward Everett Hale presided, and among the 
speakers was Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant, of London, 
whose eloquent addresses at the congresses from time 
to time made her well known in Chicago. 

Dr. Hale, in calling the congress to order, said 
that love to God and love to man was the war cry of 
Unitarianism and that the truth underlying these 
words was the foundation of all religions. Mrs. 
Laura Ormiston Chant then made a brief speech. 
She said that there were three steps to religion. The 
first was soap and water, that with uncleanliness a 
man would not care to be converted, and to go to a 
church and be sandwiched between his richer brethren. 
The second stage of the gospel was plenty to eat and 
good cooking, and that it was useless to preach the 
gospel to man with a hungry stomach. The third 
stage was good clothes. One of the greatest helps 
toward religion she said was smiles and laughter. 
Let all the sunshine come into our lives as much as 
possible. The world was a very pleasant place to live 
in in the olden days, and is very pleasant even now, 



200 THE WORLD* S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

if we keep in the sunshine as much as possible and 
take the rain good-naturedly. We should not sigh 
for the days that are gone by. There is no returning 
over the path of life. The dark bridge that spans 
the stream of time falls down with every step, and 
we look back into chaotic darkness and at our feet 
lies a gulf whose bottom we cannot see, so deep is 
it. There is no turning back; we must push for- 
ward, and it behooves us to push forward bravely and 
merrily, and not sit by the roadside sulking and long- 
ing for opportunities while opportunities are slipping 
by. We miss a great deal of the happiness of to- 
day by dreaming of the happiness that is gone. 
Speaking of a parliament of religions, Mrs. Chant 
said that it has marked a milestone on the road to 
progress, and that in the years that are to come the 
people of the next generation would look back upon 
this time with wonder, and it should be remembered 
as the settlement of all the differences existing be- 
tween the kindred religions. 

MR. NAGARKAR'S TALK. 

A most interesting speech was that of B. B. Nagar- 
kar, of Bombay, India, and the exponent of Brahmo- 
Somaj religion. He said that the church of the 
Brahmo-Somaj is exactly the same as the Unitarian 
church of England and America. That on their ban- 
ners was inscribed the self-same motto, the brother- 
hood of man. "It is only sixty years ago that the 
church of the Brahmo-Somaj was established, and 
even to-day we do not number more than 6,000 
through India," said the speaker. "We have only 



UNITARIANISM AND UNIVERSALISM 201 

about ioo preachers disseminating the doctrines of 
our spirtual faith throughout India and the Punjaub. 
We are not regarded as the most powerful sect, but, 
on the other hand, we have a smaller following at 
present than the Buddhists or the pure Brahmans. 
But we are gaining in numbers day by day." He 
said that he stopped in London on his way to Amer- 
ica to study Unitarianism and that the principles 
were identical with the principles of the Brahmo- 
Somaj. He continued: 

I have often been asked what I thought of Christ. 
The question is a difficult one to answer off-hand, but 
I think of Christ, the great teacher of Nazareth, as a 
king of prophets. We of the Brahmo-Somaj look upon 
him as a great prophet of the Western world, but we 
are not prepared to deify him as are our brothers of 
the West. This doctrine of the Brahmo-Somaj is that 
we look to Christ through God, and not God through 
Christ. The trouble with you Americans and your 
American missionaries is that you don't understand 
our people of the East. You send your missionaries 
to the burning sands of India, and your missionaries 
at once want us to bring or take in the doctrines of 
the Christian's church, to believe in Christ, and to 
cut loose from all our old traditions handed down 
through sacred ages from our fathers of old. 

INDIA IN UNCERTAINTY. 

India is in the chrysalis state of uncertainty. Wes- 
tern ideas are becoming disseminated among our peo- 
ple, and Western customs are becoming more and more 
in vogue. Western manners are being copied, but 
India must not accept all of the tenets and dogmas 



202 



of Western religion. The religion of the Brahmo- 
Somaj is beautiful, philosophical, poetical, abounding 
with metaphors and figures and with the sweetest 
truths that .ever emanated from the spirit of man or 
God. In India the church is not a Sunday institution, 
but an every-day institution. The plumbline of the 
nation is its high regard of religion. Western thought 
is dawning upon us, but India should and shall be 
faithful to the old-time tradition of her forefathers. 

UNIVERSALIS^! 

"The Nature of Salvation" was the subject of a 
paper by Rev. Charles H. Eaton, of New York City. 
He said that the modern conception of salvation did 
not emphasize locality but character. It did not deal 
with place or time, but with qualities of mind and 
heart that are independent of time and place. Sal- 
vation was a state and a process. It was not the 
successful working out of a system, but the creation 
of a new personality. 

Hell was a spiritual and personal fact. It had no 
objective existence. Heaven was a state rather than 
a locality. The soul was organized for truth and 
love, and this was one of the characteristics of salva- 
tion. The main characteristics of salvation were 
faith — faith in God and in man, in God's goodness 
and in man's moral capacity, faith in the power of 
truth and the forward movement of humanity. In 
the older view, salvation was the appropriation of a 
divine satisfaction for sin. He said that one of the 
best days for humanity was when Eve plucked and 
ate the apple from the tree of knowledge. It was 



UNlTARIANISM AND UNIVERSALISM 20$ 

the beginning of virtue, and virtue is certainly better 
than innocence. In a very true sense the fall of 
Adam "was a fall upward". It was the birthday of 
civilization. The universalist emphatically denied 
the total depravity of the soul. Humanity may be 
in ruins, but the ruins were noble and still retained 
the lines of strength and beauty and the possibility 
of reconstruction. There were none who had fallen 
so low that the conscience ceases to upbraid. 

IDEAS OF SALVATION 

The Universalist idea of salvation, according to the 
speaker, only affirmed that salvation was universal. 
Partial salvation to the Universalist was the denial 
both of the teaching of revelation and reason. In 
conclusion, he said: 

The humblest and most exalted have discovered 
that in Christ they find the necessary guidance and 
inspiration. For all sorts and conditions of men the 
son of God and the son of man has unbounded sym- 
pathy. Now, as in ancient -times, he is moved by the 
irresistible impulse to preach the gospel of the king- 
dom to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to bring 
deliverance to the captive and recovery of sight to the 
blind. He confounds error by truth in the nineteenth 
century as in the first. At his touch hate is turned to 
love, unrest to rest, and unbelief to a deep and abid- 
ing faith. This love of Christ which floods his soul 
is limited to no time or place. It is confined to no 
favored people. It seeks the worshiper at the altar 
of Buddah as well as the one who vows before the 
throne of Jehovah. It expresses itself in the lofty 
hymns of the Vedas. It wings with power the maxims 



2C>4 the world's congress of religions 

of Confucius. It burns in the high places of Schiroz 
and Mecca, and adds fire to the moralities of Solomon 
and Aurelius. 

Wherever, indeed, in this world or any other, a sin- 
ner turns in disgust from his sin, wherever and when- 
ever trembling lips are lifted in prayer for help, Christ 
responds with effective aid. Death and the grave can 
raise no barrier between the souls of the outcast and 
the saving grace of Christ. This conception of Christ 
in his relation to salvation lifts him above all mere 
mechanics of religion and makes him the personal 
Saviour of each soul, through the impartation of the 
divine love of which he is the expression and the me- 
dium. Salvation, in the universalist view, is character 
based upon eternal principles of right. Penitence is 
its mete, perfection its goal. It can alone be realized 
when it is universal. In the far-off but coming time 
the divine love will touch into life and love created 
being. 



CHAPTER XII 

THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

People of every belief and from almost every land 
crowded into hall 7 to witness the opening of the 
Congress of Theosophy. Women in bright dresses 
and gaudy hats were in the vast majority. They 
were content to stand on any coign of vantage around 
the corners of the hall or to be crushed in the door- 
way. Outside the hall theosophical literature was 
distributed in wholesale quantities. Here there was 
a stout defender of the faith ready to answer all ques- 
tions and meet all arguments. On the platform were 
Mrs. Annie Besant, vice-president of the Theosoph- 
ical Society, Judge G. N. Chakravarti, India, and 
other leading lights of the movement. In opening 
the meeting Mr. Wright, president of the Chicago 
branch, outlined the organization work and the design 
of the congress, expressing gratification for the op- 
portunity to set forth before all the world the prin- 
ciples of the religion which, in the opinion of the 
society, was the root of all religions. He then intro- 
duced William Q, Judge, of New York, vice presi- 
dent of the general society, and general secretary of 
the American section. Mr. Judge welcomed the del- 
egates and spoke briefly of the qualifications of the 
delegates. Mr. Chakravarti, of India; Miss Muller 

205 



206 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

and Mrs. Besant, of London, and Mrs. Cooper-Oak- 
ley, represented the Australian section. Claude F. 
Wright, of London, read the credentials of the foreign 
delegates, and the official call of President H. S. Al- 
cott, of Adyar, India, who was unable to be present, 
was read by Mrs. Besant. In substance it recognized 
the delegates, and appointed William Q. Judge to 
act instead of the president, and warned all speakers 
to avoid committing the society to any creed. 

MR. CHAKRAVARTl'S ADDRESS. 

After a few pleasant preliminaries, Professor G. N. 
Chakravarti, of Allahabad, India, was introduced 
to speak of the theosophical doctrine of unity. He 
said that theosophy in its highest aspects was transcen- 
dental in the extreme. It was, in fact, unrepresent- 
able and ineffable. These higher aspects were to be 
attained only by a long series of discipline and con- 
templation according to the scriptures of the East. 
Since it was useless to attempt any exposition of that 
which could not be spoken, the attempt of modern 
theosophy was to bring some part of the truth to the 
plane of intellectual demonstration, so that it might 
be appreciated by the mass of the people. If it did 
nothing better than to teach the divine truth of 
brotherhood it would be the grandest of religions, and 
entitled to the reverence of the whole world. Its 
doctrine of brotherhood was based upon scientific 
demonstration and was the only essential doctrine 
imposed upon those who accepted the system. Aside 
from this, theosophy aimed to give some method of 
tearing aside the deep veil of mystery which ev^ * hcs 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 207 

surrounded the eternal light of Deity. In addition it 
showed the fundamental truth of all the religion of 
the world. It showed also in defense of its doctrine 
of universal brotherhood that all creatures sprung 
from the same source and are destined to undergo 
the same processes of evolution, and ultimately to 
return to the same source from which they came. 
It involved everything from the lowest protoplasm to 
the highest organism. It regarded all animals as 
waiting their time to reach man's estate, and it rep- 
resented each as a candidate for those higher and di- 
viner states of existence toward which man was 
^ending, but which he did not now dream of. "God 
pervades the whole universe," he said, "and dwells in 
all things and all things are one with God." This 
exposition of theosophical ideas was received with 
great applause by all who were able to hear it. 

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 

MIND ALONE HATH POWER TO CONQUER EVIL AND SICK- 
NESS 

S. J. Hanna, editor of the Christian Science Jour- 
nal, contributed the following paper on "The Unity 
of Christian Science": 

The bow of omnipotence already spans the moral 
heavens with light and the enlarged spiritual thought 
meets the material thought like a promise upon the 
clouds, while it inscribes upon the minds of men a 
rational religion founded in Christ. In Christian 
science God is infinite, supreme, being the only mind 
or spirit, life, substance and soul, the only law or in- 



208 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

telligence of the universe. God's individuality is un- 
known and thus a knowledge of it is left either to hu- 
man conjecture or to the eternal unfoldings of divine 
science. God is personal in its scientific sense, but 
not in any anthropomorphic sense. The dual Christ, 
Jesus, was the mediator between humanity and spirit. 
Physical causation was put aside from first to last by 
this original man Jesus. To him the statement that 
truth is real necessarily included the correlated state- 
ment that error is unreal. His senses drank in the 
spiritual evidence of perfect being, health, holiness 
and life. Our master said: "I am the way, the truth 
and the life." Truth will become the resurrection and 
the life only when it annihilates the belief that mind 
can be fettered by matter, and that death can be the 
master of life. Not death, but the understanding of 
life makes man immortal. Man would be annihilated 
were it not for the spiritual man's indissoluble con- 
nection with spirit — God. In his resurrection and as- 
cension Jesus showed that the fleshy man is mortal and 
not the real essence of manhood, and this unreal mor- 
tality disappears in presence of the reality. 

To the materialistic Thomas, looking for mind in 
matter, and to the evidence of the material senses 
more than to soul for an earnest of immortality. Jesus 
furnished the proof that he was unchanged by death. 
Therefore this physical condition, followed by his 
ascension over all material conditions, showed a pro- 
bationary and progressive state beyond the grave 
whereby he was dematerialized. Jesus said: ''These 
signs shall follow them that believe. They shall take 
up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall 
not hurt them. They shall lay hands ^ : the sick and 
they shall recover." Jesus' promise wasp... - + nal. 
Had it been given only to his immediate disciples u+~ 




SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

'rain 1863. He studied in the University of Calcutta, became a Hindu 
monk and has been a disciple of Ram Krishna since 1889. 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 20C; 

scriptural passage would have read "you," not "them." 
The purpose of his great life work touches universal 
humanity; it reached beyond the pale of a single pe- 
riod or a single following. His miracles illustrate an 
ever operative divine principle, scientific order and 
continuity. The scripture reads: "So God created 
man in his own image." 

CREATION BY DIVINE REFLECTION. 

Few persons comprehend what Christian science 
means by the word reflection. The scientific definition 
of this word unfolds Jesus' saying in chapter vi. of St. 
John's Gospel, and will reconcile Christendom to 
these four toughest points of Christian Science, name- 
ly, "The unreality of matter, and the unreality of evil, 
the unreality of sickness, the unreality of death." An 
infinite God can only create through reflection, since 
nothing can exist outside the focal distance of infinity. 
Compare man, before the mirror, to his divine princi- 
ple, God. Call the mirror Divine Science, and call 
the man its reflection. Then note how true is the re- 
flection to its original. As the subject before the mir- 
ror can neither be separated from its own image nor 
reflect its unlikeness, so God cannot be separated from 
His reflection, neither can His image and likeness lose 
perfection. The reflection of God is inseparable from 
Him, and is as immutable and eternal as God himself. 
Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to be- 
little Deity with human conceptions. 

What is the material human personality which suffers 
sins and dies? It is not man in the image of God, 
but man's counterfeit, announced by the serpent in 
the name of the Lord, even the likeness of a sinner 
to God, and the false claim that sin, sickness and death 

Congress of Religions 14 



2IO THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

are as real as health, holiness and life. St. Paul re- 
fers to this original as the flesh, alias matter, warring 
with Spirit and unreconciled to God. Therefore this 
m£.n does not reflect God, and is illustrated by the 
optical line of incidence which takes always the op- 
posite direction from the line of reflection. 

Again, according to Scripture, man lives, moves and 
has his being in God, but man is not absorbed in De- 
ity, and Deity is no more in his reflection than man is 
in a mirror, or the sun in the ray of light which goes 
out of it. As we gain the evidence in science that 
man in God's image is the only real man, the evidence 
before the senses of man's reflection disappears, and 
proportionately as the fact appears to the conscious- 
ness of the mental healer that man has his being in 
God, «good, the reflection of this thought will restore 
the sick, reform the sinner, and, carried to its ulti- 
mate, as Jesus did carry it, must destroy the last en- 
emy called death. The Christly Nazarene, when speak- 
ing of the origin of mortals, startles the human thought 
with the verdict: 

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your 
father ye will do. He was a murderer from the be- 
ginning and abode not in the truth, because there is 
no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh 
of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 
viii., 44,) 

Referring to mortals, Job said: 

What are they who dwell in houses of clay, 
Whose foundation is in the dust, 
Who crumbles as if moth-eaten? 

Usage classes both evil and good together as mind; 
therefore to be understood, Science classifies sinful 
humanity as mortal mind, meaning by this term the 
flesh opposed to Spirit, human error and evil, in con- 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 211 

tradistinction to Truth and God. Human hypotheses 
are awry when they attempt to draw correct spiritual 
conclusions from matter. Finite sense has no true 
apprehension of infinite Being. The minutiae, distinct- 
ness and grandeur of all individualities are maintained 
in the reflection of the one all-inclusive individuality, 
even as the principle of music originates, sustains and 
expresses harmony. If mortals caught music through 
the ear — a material sense — they would lose it again. 
To be master of chords and discords musical science 
must be understood. Left to the decisions of five 
senses, music is liable to be misapprehended and run 
into discord. So man, not understanding the science 
of being, and thrusting aside his divine principle as 
incomprehensible, seems to be real and right, but is 
not, and subjected to the same material sense which 
expresses discord instead of harmony. A sick and 
sinful mortal no more expresses man than discord 
music. 

Mortal man calls himself something because the 
immortal man is something. This error saith "I am 
as real as truth although I am not true, I am man al- 
though not in God's image. I am the likeness of 
Spirit although I am both mind and matter." Now, 
if this be so, and man is both mind and matter, the 
loss of one finger would take away some quality and 
quantity of man. The annihilation of man or his 
individuality through the understanding which science 
confers is impossible and more absurd than to con- 
clude that individual musical tones are lost in the 
principle of their grand harmony. 

Each sin that is overcome takes mortals one step 
out of the false consciousness called mortal, until 
every step is taken, when the perfect man forever in- 
tact is brought to light. We tread on forces. With- 



212 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

draw them and creation must collapse. Human knowl- 
edge calls them forces of matter, but Divine Science 
declares they belong wholly to Mind, are inherent in 
Mind and so restores them to their rightful home and 
classification. 

The compounded minerals or aggregate substances 
comprising the earth, the relations which constituent 
masses hold to each other, the magnitudes, distances 
and revolutions of the celestial ^bodies are of no real 
importance, when we remember that they must all give 
place to the spiritual fact by the translation of man 
and the universe back to spirit. In proportion as this 
is done will both man and the universe be found har- 
monious and cosmology be undersood. Molecular sub- 
stances, geological calculations, yea, all the parapher- 
nalia of speculative theories, based on the hypothesis 
of life and intelligence in matter, will ultimately van- 
ish, swallowed up in the infinite calculus of spirit. 

SPIRITUAL VISION CANNOT BE LOST. 

According to the law of optics how transient a bless- 
ing is material sight, when a wound on the retina may 
end the power of light and lens! Only Spiritual Vis- 
ion, the sight or sense of God and His universe, can 
never be lost. Whatever is governed by Him is never 
for an instant deprived of the light and might of in- 
telligence and life. We are sometimes led to believe 
that darkness is as real as light, but even natural sci- 
ence affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the 
absence of light, at whose coming darkness loses the 
appearance of reality. So sickness, sin and sorrow are 
the suppositional absence of harmony, and flee with 
the phantoms of the senses before Truth and Love. 
The most subtle material elements are beyond the 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 21 3 

cognizance of the five senses, and are known oniy by 
certain effects commonly attributed to them. One of 
the following statements must be true. That every- 
thing is matter; else that everything is mind. Matter 
and mind are antagonistic, and both have not place 
and power. The Scriptural definition of God as All-in- 
All establishes forever this verity and reveals the in- 
finite meanings of the eternal one — not two. What- 
ever is opposed to the immortal Divine Mind is a 
mortal mind, and not immortal. 

The Revelator has not passed the transitional stage 
in human experience called death, when he saw a new 
heaven and a new earth. The Revelator was on our 
plane of existence, while yet beholding what the eye 
cannot see. This testimony of Holy Writ sustains the 
fact in Science, that Heaven and Earth, to one con- 
sciousness or that consciousness which God bestows 
— may be Spiritual; while to another the vision is 
material. This shows unmistakably that what we 
term Matter and Spirit indicate only states and stages 
of consciousness. 

Christian Science is not the shibboleth of a sect, or 
the cabalistic insignia of a philosophy. Science is 
Mind, not matter, and because Science is not human 
it must be Divine. The Discoverer and Founder of 
Christian Science, Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy, was born 
in the little town of Bow, in the State of New Hamp- 
shire. Her family tree rooted in illustrious ancestry, 
spread its branches from England and Scotland to the 
United States. The family crest and coat of arms 
bear these mottoes: "Vincere aut mori, " victory or 
death, and "Tria juncta in uno, " three joined in one. 
In her work, "Science and Health," the text book of 
Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy writes: 'I learned that 
all real Being is in the immortal Divine Mind, where- 



214 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

as the five human senses evolve a subjective state of 
mortal Mind, called mortality and matter, thereby 
shutting out the true sense of immortality and Spirit. " 

The principle of Christian science is God. Its prac- 
tice is the power of truth over error ; its rules demon- 
strate Science. Mind is one — including nomena and 
phenomena, God and His thoughts. Mind is the cen- 
ter and circumference of all Being, the central sun of 
its own universe and infinite system of ideas. There- 
fore Mind is Divine and not human. The first rule of 
Christian Sciences, "Thou shalt have no other Gods 
before Me." The second is like unto it, "Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself." To demonstrate these 
rules on any other than their Divine Principle is im- 
possible. 

The universal brotherhood of men is a principal 
factor in Christian Science. Having one God is hav- 
ing one father, and this scientifically establishes the 
brotherhood of man. The first commandment of the 
Hebrew decalogue, when understood, unfolds the true 
principle of the brotherhood of man and the impossi- 
bility for God's children to have antagonistic minds 
and so war with one another. United in their Divine 
Principle they must practice this Principle, and so 
fulfill the scripture, "Be ye perfect even as your father 
in heaven is perfect." 

Science reverses the seeming relation of Mind and 
body — as astronomy reverses the human perception of 
the movement of the solar system — and makes the body 
tributary to Mind. The universe, like man, is to be 
interpreted by Science from its Divine Principle and 
can then be understood, but when explained on the 
basis of physical causation and evidence drawn from 
the physical senses the universe, like man, is and 
must continue to be an enigma. 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 21$ 

The definitions of law, material law, as given by 
natural science, represent a kingdom divided against 
itself; they portray law as more physical than spirit- 
ual, and therefore in contradiction to the divine de- 
cree, and so violate the law of love wherein nature 
and God are one and the natural order of heaven 
comes down to earth. If there are material laws which 
prevent disease, what then causes it? Not divine law 
for Christ healed the sick and cast out error, always 
in opposition, never in obedience to physics. Nerves 
carry a changed report over the body, according to 
the changed belief. Mesmerism, hypnotism and ani- 
mal magnetism are but the subtle modes of error, the 
voluntary and involuntary action of illusion. 

DIVINE MIND SELF-EXISTENT. 

Which was first, mind or matter? The Divine mind 
was self-existent and "made all that was made." Then 
mind was first made medicine, and that medicine was 
mind. Omnipotent mind could not possibly create a 
remedial power outside itself. If mind is first chro- 
nologically, is first potentially, and must be first 
eternally, then give to mind its place in metaphysical 
science. Inferior and unspiritual systems of thera- 
peutics may try to make mind and matter coalesce, 
but this is impossible. Health is more than a condi- 
tion of matter, nor can the material senses alone bear 
reliable testimony on any subject. 

Mortal mind uses one error as a medicine for an- 
other. It antidotes the effects of one poison by an- 
other poison. On the same basis that it quiets pain 
with morphine, it appeases malice with revenge. But 
this is false reasoning, not science; it is the "tree of 
knowledge" known by its fruits. 



2l6 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

The sick are more deplorably lost than the sinful, if 
the sick cannot rely on God for help and the sinful 
can. If God employs drugs or hygiene, or provides 
them for human use, why did not Je^sus teach his fol- 
lowers to use them, and employ them in his own heal- 
ing? Mortal mind determines the nature of disease; 
matter has no intelligence wherewith to do this, and 
the physician improves or injures the case in propor- 
tion to the truth or error which influences his conclu- 
sions. If God had instituted material laws to govern 
man, disobedience to which would have made him ill, 
Jesus would not have disregarded those laws by heal- 
ing in direct opposition to them and in defiance of 
material conditions. When we remove disease in 
Christian science by addressing the mortal mind, giv- 
ing no heed to the body, we prove that mortal mind 
creates the suffering. The issues of pain or pleasure 
must come through the human mind and — like a watch- 
man forsaking his post — we admit the intruder, for- 
getting that the Divine mind can guard this entrance. 

What is termed matter, being unintelligent, cannot 
say: "I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am well." It is 
mortal mind that speaks thus and appears to make 
good its own claims. To mortal mind sin and suffer- 
ing are real, but immortal sense includes no evil 01 
pestilence. And because it has no error of sense or 
sense of error it is immortal, Cast the sickness out 
of mortal mind and it disappears from the body. Cast 
out the sin from this mind and the sin ceases. 

REALITY OF THE MIND CURE. 

It was scientifically established that leprosy was a 
mental creation and not physical when Moses first put 
his hand into his bosom and drew it forth white as 
snow with the dread disease, and presently restored 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 217 

his hand to its natural condition by the same simple 
process. Then God s%id: "It shall come to pass if 
they will not hear thee, neither harken to the voice of 
the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the 
latter," and so it was in the coming centuries, when 
Jesus showed his students the power of mind to cast 
out evil, and disease, and healed the sick and de- 
stroyed sin, by one and the same metaphysical pro- 
cess. Christian scientists and the popular religious 
sects unite in the promise of their doctrine, but seem 
to separate in their conclusions. Both agree that there 
is one God, also that God is good and omnipotent. 
Then the Ecclesiastic and the Scientist part in their 
statement of God's powers — wherein it is found that 
the ecclesiastic believes in three fntelligent powers 
instead of one. The first power is good, an intelli- 
gence called God. The second power is evil, the 
opposite of good. It cannot therefore be intelligent, 
although so called. The third power is called the real 
man, a supposed mixture of the first and second pow- 
ers of intelligence and non-intelligence, of spirit and 
matter, of good and evil. 

Let us remember that if God is omnipotent, evil is 
impotent. There is but one side of omnipotent good 
— is has no evil side; there is but one side to reality, 
and that is the good side. If God is All-in-All, that 
finishes the question of a good and bad side to exist- 
ence. You will gather the importance of these sayings 
when sorrow comes, for "sorrow endureth but for a 
night and joy cometh in the morning." The dream is 
sickness, sin and death and your waking from it is a 
reality, even the triumph of soul over sense. Take 
the side you wish to carry and be careful not to talk 
on both sides. You are the attorney for the case, what- 
ever it be, and will win or lose according to your 



2l8 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

mental' verdict. The old Latin proverb is true, "That 
thou seest, that thou beist." 

PHYSICS YIELDING TO METAPHYSICS. 

We are in the midst of a revolution: physics are 
yielding with a struggle to Divine metaphysics. Mor- 
tal mind rebels at its own boundaries. Weary of 
matter, it would catch the meaning of spirit. If thought 
is startled at the wrong claim of science for the su- 
premacy of God or good and doubts it, ought we not 
otherwise to be astounded at the vigorous claims of 
evil and doubt them, and no longer think it natural 
to love sin and unnatural to forsake it — no longer 
imagine evil to be ever present and God absent? Truth 
should not seem as surprising and unnatural as error, 
and error should not seem as real as truth. There 
is no error in Science wherein being harmonizes with 
its divine principle, God. Corporeal sense may hide 
Truth, health, harmony and holiness as the mist ob- 
scures the fountain, but Divine Science, the sunshine 
of Truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the 
celestial peaks. 

The following are the tenets of the Christian Sci- 
ence churches: 

i. As adherents of truth we take the Scriptures for 
our guide to eternal life. 

2. We acknowledge and adore one Supreme God. 
We acknowledge his son and the Holy Ghost and man 
as the Divine image and likeness. We acknowledge 
God's forgiveness of sin, in the destruction of sin, and 
his present and future punishment of "whatsoever 
worketh abomination or maketh a lie.'* We acknowl- 
edge the atonement as proof of man's unity with God, 
and the way of Salvation as demonstrated by Jesus 
casting out evils, healing the sick and raising the dead 
— resurrecting a dead faith to seize the great possi- 
bilities and living energies of divine life. 



THEOSOPHY AND CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 210, 

3. We solemnly promise to strive, watch and pray 
for that mind to be in us which was also in Christ 
Jesus. To love one another, and up to our highest 
understanding to be meek, merciful and just, and to 
live peaceable with all men. 

Brethren of the United World, in unification of hope 
and charity we can say in the words of the Hebrew 
bard: "Who is so great a God as our God?" 



CHAPTER XIII 
CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 

BY PROF. HENRY DRUMMOND 

No more fitting theme could be chosen for discus- 
sion at this congress than the relation of Christianity 
to evolution. By evolution I do not mean Darwin- 
ism, which is not yet proved, nor Spencerism, which 
is incomplete, nor Weisemannism, which is in the hot- 
test fires of criticism, but evolution as a great category 
of thought, as the supreme word of the nineteenth 
century. More than that, it is the greatest general- 
ization the world has ever known. The mere pres- 
ence of this doctrine in science has reacted as by an 
electric induction on every surrounding circle of 
thought. No truth can remain now unaffected by 
evolution. We see truth as a profound ocean still, 
but with a slow and ever-rising tide. Theology must 
reckon with this tide. We can stir this truth in our 
vessels for the formulation of doctrine, but the for- 
mulation of doctrine must never stop, and the vessels 
with their mouths open must remain in the ocean. 
If we take them out the tide cannot rise in them, and 
we shall only have stagnant doctrines. 

The average mind looks at science with awe. It 
is the breaking of a fresh seal. It is the one chapter 
of the world's history with which he is in doubt. 

220 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 221 

What it contains for Christianity or against it he 
knows not. What it will do or undo he cannot tell. 
The problems to be solved are more in number and 
more intricate than were ever known before and he 
waits almost in excitement for the next development. 
And yet this attitude of Christianity is as free from 
false hope as it is free from false fear. 

' RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

The idea that religion is to be improved by reason 
of its relation with science is almost a new thing. 
Religion and science began the centuries hand in 
hand. And after a long separation we now ask what 
contributions has science to bestow? What God- 
given truths is science bringing now to lay at the feet 
of our Christ? True, science is as much the friend 
of true religion as any branch of truth, and in all the 
struggles between them in the past they have both 
come out of the struggles enriched, purified and en- 
larged. The first fact to be restored, evolution has 
swept over the doctrine of creation and left it un- 
touched except for the better. Science has discovered 
how God made the world. 

Fifty years ago Darwin wrote in dismay to Hooker 
that the old theory of specific creation, that God 
made all species apart and introduced them into the 
world one by one, was melting away before his eyes. 
One of the last books on Darwinism, that of Alfred 
Wallace, says in its opening chapter these words: 

The whole scientific and literary world, even the 
whole educated public, accepts as a matter of common 
knowledge the origin of species from other like species 
by the ordinary processes of natural birth. 



222 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Theology, after a period of hesitation, accepts this 
version. The hesitation was not due to prejudice, 
but for the arrival of the proof. The doctrine of 
evolution no one will assert, is yet proved. It will 
be time for theology to be unanimous when science 
is unanimous. If science is satisfied in a general way 
with its theory of evolution as the method of creation, 
assent is a cold word with which those whose busi- 
ness it is to know and love the ways of God should 
welcome it. [Applause.] The theory of evolution 
fills a gap at the very beginning of our religion. As 
to its harmony with the question or the theory about 
the book of Genesis it may be that theology and 
science have been brought into perfect harmony, but 
the era of the reconcilers is to be looked upon as 
past. That was a necessary era. 

BOOKS OF GENESIS. 

Genesis was not a scientific but a religious book, 
and, there being no science there, theologians put it 
there, and their attempt to reconcile it would seem 
to be a msitake. Genesis is a presentation of one or 
two great elementary truths of the childhood of the 
world. It can only be read in the spirit in which it 
was written with its original purpose in view, and its 
original audience. Its object was purely religious, 
the point being not how certain things were made, 
which is a question for science, but that God made 
them. The book was not dedicated to science but to 
the soul. The misfortune is that there is no one to 
announce in the name of theology that the contro- 
versy between science and religion is at an end. 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 223 

Evolution has swept over the religious conception of 
origin and left it untouched except for the better. 
The method of creation: the question of origin is an- 
other. There is only one theory of creation in the 
field, and that is evolution. Evolution has discovered 
nothing new and professes to know nothing new. 
Evolution, instead of being opposed to creation, as- 
sumes creation. Law is not the cause of the order 
of the world, but the expression of it. Evolution 
only professes to give an account of the development 
of the world; it does not offer to account for it. This 
is what Professor Tyndal said: 

When I stand in the springtime and look upon the 
bright foliage, the lilies in the field and share the gen- 
eral joy of opening life I have often asked myself 
whether there is any power, any being or thing in the 
universe whose knowledge of that of which I am so 
ignorant is greater than mine, I have said to my- 
self, can it be possible that man's knowledge is the 
greatest knowledge, that man's life is the highest life. 
My friends, the profession of that atheism with which 
I am sometimes so lightly charged would, in my case, 
be an impossible answer to this question. 

And more pathetically later, in connection with 
the charge of atheism, he said: 

Christian men are proved by their writings to have 
their hours of weakness and of doubt as well as their 
hours of strength and conviction; and men like my- 
self share in their own way these variations of mood 
and sense. I have noticed during years of self-obser- 
vation that it is not in hours of clearness and of vigor 
that this doctrine commends itself to my mind — it is 
in the hours of stronger and healthier thought that it 
ever dissolves and disappears as offering no solution 
to the mystery in which we dwell and of which we 
form a part. 



224 THE world's congress of religions 

SCIENCE AND THEISM. 

Some of the protests of science against theism are 
directed not against true theism, but against its super- 
stitious and irrational forms, which it is the business 
of science to question What Tyndal calls a fierce 
and distorted theism is as much the enemy of Chris- 
tianity as of science; and if science can help Chris- 
tianity to destroy it it does well. What we have 
really to fight against is both unfounded belief and 
unfounded unbelief, and there is perhaps just as much 
of the one as of the other floating in current litera- 
ture. As Mr. Ruskin says: "You have to guard 
against the darkness of the two opposite prides — the 
pride of faith, which imagines that the character of 
the deity can be prove by its convictions, and the pride 
of science, which imagines that the deity can be ex- 
plained by its analysis." I may give in passing the 
authorized statement of a well-known fellow of the 
Royal Society of London, which, I need not remind 
you, is the representative party of British men of 
science. Its presidents are invariably men of the 
first rank. This gentleman said: 

I have known the British association under forty- 
one different presidents, all leading men of science. 
On looking over those forty-one names I count twenty 
who, judged by their private utterances or private 
communications, are men of Christian belief and 
character, while, judging by the same test, I find 
only four who disbelieve in any divine revelation. 
Of the remaining seventeen some have possibly been 
religious men and others may have been opponents, 
but it is fair to suppose that the greater number have 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 225 

given no very serious thought to the subject. The 
figures indicate that religious faith rather than un- 
belief have characterized the leading men of the as- 
sociation. 

Instead of robbing the word of God science has done 
more than all the philosophies and natural theolo- 
gies to sustain the theistic conception. It has made 
it impossible for the world to worship any other God. 
The sun and the moon and the stars have been found 
out; science has shown us exactly what they are. 
No man can worship them any more. 

DEISTIC REVELATION OF SCIENCE. 

If science has not by searching found out God it 
has not found any other God, nor anything else like 
a God, that might continue to be a conceivable and 
rational object of worship in a scientific age. If by 
searching it has not found God it has found a place 
for God As never before from the purely physical 
side of things it has shown there is room in the world 
for God. It has given us a more Godlike God. The 
new energies in the world demand a will and an ever 
present will. To science God no longer made the 
world and then withdrew; he pervades the whole. 
Under the old view God was a nonresident God and 
an occasional wonder worker. Now he is always 
here. 

It is certain that every step of science discloses the 
attributes of the Almighty with a growing magnifi- 
cence. The author of natural religion tells us that 
the average scientific man worships at present a more 
awful and, as it were, a greater deity than the aver- 

Congresa of Religions 15 



226 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

age Christian. Certain it is that the Christian view 
and the scientific view together form a conception of 
the object of worship such as the world in its highest 
inspiration never reached before. Never before have 
the attributes of eternity and immensity and infinity 
clothed themselves with language so majestic in its 
sublimity. Mr. Huxley tells us that he would like to 
see a Sunday school established in every parish. If 
this only were to be taught we should be rich indeed 
to be qualified to be the teachers in those Sunday 
schools. 

One cannot fail to prophesy in view of the latest 
contributions of science, that before another half 
century has passed there will be a theological ad- 
vance of moment. Under the new view the whole 
question of the incarnation is beginning to assume a 
fresh development. Instead of standing alone an 
isolated phenomenon its profound relations to the 
whole scheme of nature are opening up. The ques- 
tion of revelation is undergoing a similar expansion. 
The whole order and scheme of nature are seen to be 
only part of the manifold revelation of God. 

EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE. 

As to the specific revelations' the Old and New 
Testaments' evolution has already given the world 
what amounts to a new Bible. Its peculiarity is, 
that in its form it is like the world in which it is 
found. It is a word, but its root is now known an 
we have other words from the same root. Its sub- 
stance is still the unchanged language of heaven, yet 
it is written in a familiar tongue. This Bible is not 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 227 

a book which has been made, it has grown. Hence 
it is no longer a mere word book nor a compendium 
of doctrines, but a nursery of growing truths. 

Like nature, it has successive strata and valley and 
hilltop and atmosphere, and rivers are flowing still, 
and here and there a place which is a desert, and 
fossils, whose true forms are the stepping stones to 
higher things. It is a record of inspired deeds as well 
as of inspired words, a series of inspired facts in the 
matrix of human history. This is not the product 
of any destructive movement, nor is this transformed 
book in any sense a mutilated Bible. All this change 
has taken place, it may be without the elimination 
of a book or the loss of an important word. It is 
simply a transformation by a method whose main 
warrant is that the book lend itself to it. Other 
questions are moving the world just now, but one has 
only time to name them. The doctrine of immortal- 
ity, the relation of the person of Christ to evolution 
and the operation of the Holy Spirit are attracting 
attention and lines of new thought have ever been 
suggested. 

Not least in interest is the possible contribution 
from science on some of the more practical problems 
of theology and the doctrine of sin. On the last point 
the suggestion has been made that sin is probably a 
relic of the animal caste, the undestroyed residuum of 
the animal, and the subject, ranked at least as an 
hypothesis, with proper safeguards may one day yield 
some glimmering light to theology on its oldest and 
darkest problem. If this partial suggestion, and at 
present it is nothing more, can be followed out to any 



228 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

purpose, the result would be of much greater and 
speculative interest, or if science can help us in any 
way to know how sin came into the world, it may 
help us better to know how to get it out. [Applause.] 

DOCTRINE OF SIN. 

A better understanding of its genesis and nature 
may modify, at least, some of the attempts made to 
get rid of it, whether in a national or individual life. 
But the time is not ripe to speak with more than the 
greatest caution an humility of these still tremendous 
problems. There is and intellectual covetousness 
abroad, which is neither the fruit nor the friend of a 
scientific age. The haste to be wise, like the haste 
to be rich, leads many to speculate in indifferent 
securities, and can only end in fallen fortunes. The- 
ology must not be bound up with such speculations. 

At the same time speculation must continue to be 
its life and its highest duty. We are sometimes 
warned that the scientific method has dangers and 
are told not to carry it too far. But it is then after 
all it becomes chiefly dangerous when we are warned 
not to carry it too far. Apart from all details, apart 
from the influence of modern science on points of 
Christian theology, that to which most of us look 
with eagerness and gratitude is its contribution to 
applied Christianity. The true answer to the ques- 
tion, is there any conflict between Christianity and 
theology, is that in practice at all events the two are 
one. 

What is the object of Christianity? It is the 
evolving of men, the making of higher and better men 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 229 

in a higher and better world. That is also the object 
of evolution, what evolution has been doing since 
time began. Christianity is the further evolution. 
It is an evolution re-enforced with all the moral and 
spiritual forces that have entered the world and 
cleaved to humanity through Jesus Christ. Beginning 
with atoms and crystals, passing to plants and animals, 
evolution finally reaches man. But unless it ceases 
to be scientific fact it cannot stop there. It must go 
on to include the whole man, and all the work and 
thought and light and aspiration of man. The great 
moral facts, the moral forces, so far as they are 
proved to exist, the Christian consciousness, so far 
as it is real, must come within its scope. Human 
history is as much a part of it as natural history. 

CHRISTIANITY THE LATER EVOLUTION. 

When all this is included it will be seen that evo- 
lution, organic evolution, is but the earlier chapter 
of Christianity, and that Christianity is but the later 
evolution. There can be but one verdict then as to 
the import of evolution, as to its bearings on the in- 
dividual life and future of the race. The supreme 
message of science to this age is that all nature is on 
the side of the man who tries to rise. Evolution, 
development and progress are not only on her pro- 
gramme; these are her programme. [Applause.] 
For all things are rising — all world, all planets, all 
stars, all suns. An ascending energy is the universe, 
and the whole moves on with one mighty ideal and 
anticipation. The aspiration of the human mind and 
heart is but the evolutionary tendency of the uni- 



230 THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

verse. Darwin's great discovery, or the discovery 
which he brought into prominence is the same as 
that of Galileo, that the world moves. The Italian 
prophet says it moves from west to east. The Eng- 
lish philosopher says it moves from low to high. 

As in the days of Galileo, there are many now who 
do not see that the world moves, men to whom the 
world is an endless plane, a prison fixed in a pur- 
poseless universe, where untried prisoners await their 
unknown fate. It is not the monotony of life that 
destroys; it is the pointlessness. They can bear its 
weight; its meaninglessness crushes them. The same 
revolution that the discovery of the axial rotation of 
the earth effected in the world of physics the doctrine 
of evolution will make in the moral world. Already 
a sudden and marvelous light has fallen upon the 
earth. Evolution is less a doctrine than a light. It 
is a light revealing in the chaos of the past a perfect 
and growing order, giving meaning even to the con- 
fusion of the present, discovering through all the 
denseness around us the paths to progress and flash- 
ing its rays upon the coming goal. 

Men began to see an undivided ethical purpose in 
this material world, a tide that from eternity has 
never turned, making to perfectness in that vast pro- 
gression of nature, that vision of all things from the 
first of time, moving from low to high, from incom- 
pleteness to completeness, from imperfection to per- 
fection. The moral nature recognizes in all its height 
and depth the eternal claim upon itself — wholeness 
and perfection to holinesss and righteousness. These 
have always been required of man, but never before 



CHRISTIANITY AND EVOLUTION 23 1 

on the natural plan have they been proclaimed by 
voices so commanding or enforced by actions so great 
and rational. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIP- 
TURES 

BY DR. CHARLES A. BRIGGS 

The time allotted for a paper like this is so short 
that I can only treat the subject very cursorily and 
with many gaps which every one of you will probably 
notice. All the great historical religions have sacred 
books which are regarded as the inspired word of 
God. Prominent among those sacred books are the 
Holy Scriptures of the Christian church. The history 
of the Christian church shows that it is the intrinsic 
excellence of these Holy Scriptures which has given 
them the control of so large a portion of our whole 
race. With a few exceptions the Christian religion 
was not extended by force of arms or by the arts of 
statesmanship, but by the holy lives and faithful 
teaching of self-sacrificing men and women, who had 
firm faith in the truthfulness of the Holy Scriptures 
and were able to convince men in all parts of the world 
that they are faithful guides to God and salvation. 
We may now say confidently to all men: "All the 
sacred books of the world are now accessible to you; 
study them; compare them; recognize all that is 
good and noble and true in them all, and tabulate re- 
sults, and you will be convinced that the Holy Scrip- 

232 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 233 

tures of the Old and New Testaments are true, holy 
and divine." 

When we have gone searchingly through all the 
books of other religions we will find that they are as 
torches of various sizes and brilliance lighting up the 
darkness of the night, but the Holy Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments are like the sun shining in 
the heavens and lighting up the whole world. 

CANNOT ESCAPE CRITICISM. 

We are living in a scientific age, which demands 
that every traditional statement shall be tested. 
Science explores the earth in its height and breadth, 
in search of truth; it explores the heavens in order 
to solve the mysteries of the universe; it investigates 
all the monuments of history, whether of stone or of 
metal; and that man must be lacking in intelligence, 
or in observation at least, who imagines that the 
sacred books of the Christian religion or the institu- 
tions of the Christian church shall escape the criticism 
of this age. It will not do to oppose science with 
religion or criticism with faith. Criticism makes it 
evident that the faith which shrinks from criticism is 
a faith so weak and uncertain that it excites suspicion 
as to its life and reality. Science goes on, confident 
that every form of religion which resists this criticism 
will ere long crumble into dust. All departments of 
human investigation sooner or later come in contact 
with the Christian Scriptures; all find something that 
accords with them or conflicts with them; and the 
question forces itself upon us, Can we maintain the 
truthfulness of the Holy Scriptures in the face of 



234 THE WORLD* S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

modern science? We are forced to admit that there 
are scientific errors in the Bible, errors of astronomy, 
geology, zoology, botany, and anthropology. In all 
these respects there is no evidence that the authors 
of the Scriptures had any other knowledge than that 
possessed by their contemporaries. Their statements 
are such as indicate ordinary observation of the 
phenomena of life. They had not that insight, that 
grasp of conception and power of expression in these 
matters such as they exhibited when writing concern- 
ing matters of religion. 

MISTAKES IN THE BIBLE. 

It was not the intent of God to give to the ancient 
world the scientific knowledge of our nineteenth cen- 
tury. Why should any one suppose that the divine 
spirit influenced them in relation to any such matters 
of science? Why should they be kept from misstate- 
ments, misconceptions, and errors in such respects? 
The Divine Spirit wished to use them as religious 
teachers, and so long as they made no mistakes in 
that respect they were trustworthy and reliable, even 
if they erred in such matters as come in contact with 
modern science. There are historical mistakes in 
the Bible, mistakes of chronology and geography, 
discrepancies and inconsistencies which can not be 
removed by any proper method of interpretation. 
There are such errors as we are apt to find in modern 
history. There is no evidence that the writers of 
the Scriptures received any of their history by revela- 
tion from God. There is no evidence that the divine 
spirit corrected these narratives. The purpose of the 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 235 

sacred writers was to give us the history of God's 
redemptive workings. This made it necessary that 
there should be no essential errors in the redemptive 
facts and agencies, but did not make it necessary 
that there should be no mistakes in places, dates, and 
persons, so long as these did not change the redemp- 
tive lessons or redemptive facts. None of the mis- 
takes which have been discovered disturb the religious 
lessons of the Biblical history, and those lessons are 
the only ones whose truthfulness we are concerned 
to defend. [Applause.] 

Higher criticism recognizes faults of grammar, of 
rhetoric, and logic in the Hebrew and Greek Scrip- 
tures, but errors in these formal things do not mar 
the truthfulness of the religious instruction itself. 
Higher criticism shows that most of the books were 
composed by unknown authors, that they have 
passed through the hands of a considerable number 
of unknown editors. In this process of editing, ar- 
ranging, of addition, subtraction, and reconstruction, 
extending through so many centuries, what evidence 
have we that these unknown editors were kept from 
error in all their work? 

INACCURACIES OF HUMAN AGENCIES. 

They were guided by the divine spirit in their com- 
prehension and expression of the divine instruction, 
but judging also from their work it seems most prob- 
able that they were not guided by the divine spirit in 
grammar, rhetoric, logic, expression, arrangment of 
material or general editorial work. They were left 
to those errors which even the most faithful and scru- 



236 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

pulous of writers will sometimes make. The science 
which approaches the Bible from without and the 
science which studies it from within agree as to the 
essential facts of the case. 

Now can the truthfulness of scripture be maintained 
by those who recognize these errors? There is no 
reason why the substantial truthfulness of the Bible 
shall not be consistent with circumstantial errors. 
God did not speak himself in the Bible except a few 
words recorded here and there; he spoke in much 
greater parts in the Old Testament through the voices 
and pens of the human authors of the scriptures. 
Did the human minds and pens always deliver the 
inerrant word? Even if all writers possessed of the 
holy spirit were merely passive in the hands of God, 
the question is can the human voice and pen express 
the infinite truth of God? How can an imperfect 
sentence express the divine truth? It is evident that 
the writers of the Bible were not as a rule in an 
ecstatic state. The holy spirit suggested to them the 
divine truths they were to teach. They received 
them by intuition, and framed them in imagination 
and fancy. Then if the divine truth passed through 
the conception and imagination of the human mind, 
did the human mind receive it fully without any fault 
or shadow of error; did the human mind add any- 
thing to it or color it; was it delivered in its entirety 
exactly as it was received? 

GOD IS TRUE. 

How can we be sure of this when we see the same 
doctrine in such a variety of forms, all partial and 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 237 

all inadequate? All that we can claim is inspiration 
and accuracy for that which suggests the religious 
lessons to be imparted. God is true. He is the 
truth. He cannot lie; he cannot mislead or deceive 
his creatures. But the question arises, When the 
infinite God speaks to finite man must he speak words 
which are not error? This depends not only upon 
God's speaking but on man's hearing, and also on 
the means of communication betewen God and man. 
It is necessary to show the capacity of man to re- 
ceive the word before we can be sure that he trans- 
mitted it correctly. The inspiration of the Holy 
Scriptures does not carry with it inerrancy in every 
particular; it was sufficient if the divine truth was 
given with such clearness as to guide men aright in re- 
ligious life. The errors of Holy Scripture are not 
errors of falsehood or deceit, but of ignorance, in- 
advertence, partial and inadequate knowledge, and of 
incapacity to express the whole truth of God which 
belonged to man as man. Just as light is seen not 
in its pure and clouded state, but in the beautiful 
colors of the spectrum, so it is that the truth of God, 
its revelation and communication to man, met with 
such obstacles in human nature. Men are capable 
of receiving it only in its diverse operations, and 
diverse manners as it comes to them through the di- 
verse temperaments and points of view of the Biblical 
writers. The religion of the Old Testament is a re- 
ligion which includes some things hard to reconcile 
in an interrant revelation. The sacrifice of Jephtha's 
daughter, the divine command to Abraham to offer 
up his son as a burnt offering seem unsuited to divine 



238 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

revelation. The New Testament taught that sacri- 
fices must be of broken, contrite hearts, and humble 
and cheerful spirits. What pleasure could God take 
in smoking altars? How could the true God pre- 
scribe such puerilities? We can only say that God 
was training Israel to the meaning of the higher sac- 
rifices. The offering up of children and domestic 
animals was part of a preparatory discipline. But it 
was provisional and temporal discipline. It was the 
form necessary then to clothe the divine law of sacri- 
fice in the early stages of revelation. They were the 
object lessons by which the children of the ancient 
world could be trained to understand the inerrant law 
of sacrifice for man. St. Paul calls the weak and 
beggarly rudiments the shadow of the things to 
come. 

PATRIARCHS NOT TRUTHFUL. 

We cannot defend morals in the Old Testament at 
all points. Nowhere in the Old Testament was 
polygamy or slavery condemned. The time had not 
come in the history of the world when they could be 
condemned. Is God to be held responsible for these 
twin relics of barbarism because he did not condemn, 
but on the contrary recognized them and restrained 
them in the early stages of his revelation? The pa- 
triarchs are not truthful. Their age seems to have had 
little comprehension of the principles of truth, yet 
Abraham was faithful to God, and so faithful under 
temptation and trial that he became the father of the 
faithful, and from that point of view the friend of 
God. David was a sinner, a very wicked sinner, but 
he was a penitent sinner, and showed such a devout 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 239 

attachment to the worship of God that his sins, 
though many, were all forgiven him, and his life as 
a whole exhibits such generosity, courage, human 
affection, and such heroism and patience under suffer- 
ing, and such self-restraint under magnificent pros- 
perity, such nobility and grandeur of character alto- 
gether that we must admire him and love him as one 
of the best of men, and we are not surprised that the 
heart of the infinite God went out to him. Many of 
the stories of revenge in the Old Testament stand out 
in glaring contrast to the picture of Jesus Christ pray- 
ing for his enemies, and it is the story of Christ that 
lifts us into a different ethical air from any of the Old 
Testament. We cannot regard these things in the 
Old Testament as inerrant in the light of the moral 
character of Jesus Christ and the moral character of 
God as he reveals it. And yet we may well under- 
stand that the Old Testament times were not ripe 
for the higher revelation, and that God condescended 
to a partial revelation of his will, such as would guide 
his people in the right direction with as steady and 
rapid a pace as they were capable of making. 

ETHICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Jesus Christ teaches the true principle. You may 
judge the ethics of the Old Testament when he re- 
pealed the Mosaic laws of divorce. He said: "Moses, 
for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away 
your wives, but from the beginning it hath not been 
so." In other words Mosaic law of divorce was not 
in accord with the original institution of marriage, or 
with the mind and will of the Holy God. [Applause.] 



24O THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

God revealed himself partially to the people of the Old 
Testament in a way sufficient for their purposes of 
preparatory discipline, which revelation was to dis- 
appear forever when it had accomplished its purpose. 
The laws of the Old Testament have all been cast 
down by the Christian church, with the single excep- 
tion of the ten laws; and with reference to the four 
of these Jesus Christ says: "The Sabbath was made 
for man, and not man for the Sabbath." The doc- 
trines of the creation is set forth in a great variety of 
beautiful poetical representations, which give, in the 
aggregate, a grand conception of the creation, a fuller 
conception than the ordinary doctrine drawn from an 
interpretation of the first and second chapter of 
Genesis. I grant he was conceived as father of the 
nations and of the kings. But as our father made 
known to us through Jesus Christ he was not known 
to the Old Testament dispensation. The profound 
depth of sympathy of God and Jesus Christ were not 
yet manifested. The doctrine of the holy trinity was 
not yet revealed. But there is a difference in God's 
revelation in these other successive layers of the Old 
Testament writing, which is like the march of an in- 
vincible army. It is true there are times when there 
are expressions of the jealousy of God and a cruel dis- 
regard of human sufferings, all of which betrayed the 
inadequacy of ancient Israel to understand their God. 

TRUTH STILL REMAINS. 

The errancy of their conceptions we all know, and 
that the true God whom we all love and worship does 
not agree with these ancient conceptions. The truth- 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 24I 

fulness of the teachings of the doctrine of God is not 
destroyed by occasional inaccuracies among the teach- 
ings. The doctrine of man of the Old Testament is 
a noble doctrine. Unity of brotherhood of the race 
in origin and destiny is established in the Old Testa- 
ment as nowhere else. The origin and development 
of sin find a response in the experience of mankind. 
The ideal of righteousness and the original plan of 
God for man, his ultimate destiny for man is held up 
as a banner over the heads of the people. Surely 
these are inspirations, they are faithful, they are 
divine. But there are doubtless expressions of faulty 
psychology and occasional exaggerations of mere ex- 
ternal forms in ceremonial worship; but these do not 
mar, but rather serve to enhance our estimate of their 
value for all of that in the Scriptures which binds our 
race to all that is good in the history of the past, crea- 
ted and given by holy God for the welfare of humanity. 
The scheme of redemption is so vast, so comprehen- 
sive, so far-reaching, that the Christian church has 
even thus far failed to fully comprehend it. All evil is 
to be banished. There is to come in a reign of univer- 
sal peace. There is to be a new heaven and a new 
earth, and a new Jerusalem from which the wicked 
will be excluded. Such ideals of redemption are 
divine ideals, which the human race has not yet at- 
tained, and which we can only partially and inade- 
quately comprehend. If in the course of training for 
these ideals of redemption for God's people, they 
have made mistakes, it is quite sure that forgiveness of 
sins was appropriated without any explanation of its 
grounds. 

Congress of Religions 16 



242 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

MAN MUST BE PREPARED. 

The sacrifices of the New were unknown in the Old 
Testament. It is the mercy of God which is the for- 
giveness of sins. There is a lack of appreciation in 
the Old Testament, of the rich men of faith. It was 
Jesus Christ who first gave faith its unique place in 
the order of salvation. The doctrine of holy love; 
the doctrine of the future life, and of the resurection 
from the dead. Thus in every department of 
doctrine the Old Testament has only advanced 
through the centuries. The several periods of 
Biblical literature, of unfolding of the doctrines, pre- 
pared the way for a full revelation in the New Testa- 
ment. That revelation looked only at the end, the 
highest ideals, that would be accomplished in the last 
century of human time; that would be a revelation 
for all men, but it would be of no use to any other 
century but the last. But man must be prepared 
for the present as well as for the future. Man must 
have something for every century of human history, 
a revelation for the barbarian as well as the Greek, 
the Gentile as well as the Jew, the dark minded 
African as well as the open minded European, the 
South Sea Islander as well as the Asiatic, the child 
as well as the man. It is just in this respect that the 
Holy Scriptures in the New Testament are so perma- 
nent and have in them religious instructions for the 
world. They were designed for the training of Israel 
in every stage of their development, and so they will 
train all minds in every stage of their development. 
It does no harm to the advanced student to look back 



THE TRUTHFULNESS OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 243 

upon the uneducated years of his youthful days. It 
does not harm the Christian to see the many imper- 
fections, crudities, and errors of the more elementary 
instructions of the Old Testament. Nor does it de- 
stroy his faith of the truthfulness of the divine word 
because it has passed through human hands. The 
infallible will has all the time been at work using the 
imperfect medium, training them to their utmost ca- 
pacity, to get man to raise them, to advance them in 
the true religion. The great books are always point- 
ing forward and upward. They are always extending 
in all directions. They are now as they always have 
been — true and faithful guides to God and all the 
highest. They are now as they always have been — 
trustworthy and reliable in their religious instruction. 
They are now as they always have been — altogether 
truthful in their testimony to the heart and experience 
of mankind. 



CHAPTER XV 
MAN FROM A CATHOLIC VIEW 

BY THE VERY REV. WM. BYRNE 

ORIGIN, ASPIRATIONS, AND ULTIMATE DESTINY OF THE 

HUMAN RACE 

Man, according to the Catholic idea, is the crown 
and perfection of all things in tfre visible creation. He 
is created with a noble purpose and a high destiny, 
in the image of God and after his likeness. He is 
dowered with the power of intellect and will, setting 
him above all created things of earth and making him 
God-like in his nature. He longs to reach the higher 
and better things to which, by an imperative and 
ever-urgent law, he necessarily aspires. He has 
cravings of the soul which no created thing is ade- 
quate to satisfy. The greater his natural endow- 
ments, the higher their cultivation, the broader his 
knowledge, the more ample and penetrating his in- 
tellectual swing and reach, the deeper and more ex- 
hausting will be the sense of a purpose unfulfilled, of 
unsatisfied yearning and baffled hope. Splendid in- 
tellectual gifts and exceptional mental training; 
moral refinement, culture and wealth; social pre- 
eminence and commanding political power; great 
civic achievements, the resounding triumphs of war 

244 



Man from a catholic view 24.5 

and the most coveted prizes of fortune — all these but 
serve to accentuate and render more sensitively acute 
those wasting longings and that fruitless reaching out 
after an object that will satisfy the cravings of the 
soul and satiate the hunger of the heart. 

The Catholic says man has a high destiny that he 
can reach, a noble purpose that he can achieve; that 
he may enjoy here on earth a serene peace and con- 
stantly look forward to the surpassing joy of living 
forever in the smile of God and ecstasy of His love. 
That such conviction, however, and confident hope 
have never been reached, nor can be, by the un- 
aided powers of man, the cry of discontent and fruit- 
less endeavor that has gone up from the heart of man, 
from the beginning, and the bootless groping in the 
dark in search of an oracle to answer the questionings 
of the soul, dispel its mists and tranquilize its mis- 
givings, abundantly prove. 

MAN NECESSARILY IS RELIGIOUS. 

Man will be religious. It is a necessity and the 
law of his being, and if he cannot rise to God, he will 
strive to draw down God to himself. "Lord, teach 
me to know myself, teach me to know Thee," was 
the prayer that went up from the soul of the great 
bishop of Hippo, and the prayer to which he gave ut- 
terance has ever been the universal cry of the heart 
of man — to know one's self, to know God. God and 
self are the two cardinal objects of man's knowledge 
to which all his intellectual efforts converge and upon 
which they terminate. Once reason has dawned on 
him and the mind opens and expands to the signifi- 



246 THE WORLD 5 S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

cance and deep meaning of all he sees round about him, 
to the order and beauty, the variety and splendor, and 
the lavish profusion of visible blessings, a knowledge 
of which is borne in upon him by eye and ear, and 
every avenue of sense, he asks himself and must ask 
himself the question: Whence all these strange sur- 
roundings bearing upon them the marks and tokens 
of a higher Intelligence and the evidence of law and 
order, purpose and design. And he must ask himself 
the still more momentous question: Whence do I 
come? Whither am I going? Am I, as the Panthe- 
ist says, the most perfect manifestation of the divine 
essence, spirit of its spirit and intellect? Or, to go 
to the other extreme of the scale, less flattering to 
the pride and vanity of man, am I but matter and 
sense, with a soul wholly dependent upon and the 
product of the digestive organs and a complex system 
of nerves with functions centering in the brain? 

SUPERNATURAL ELEMENT IN MAN. 

The supernatural element in man is precisely what 
the world is losing sight of in its eager and absorbing 
pursuit of what gratifies sense and brings to the nat- 
ural man an exhilirating, insidious and evanescent 
enjoyment; and without the supernatural there can 
be no adequate explanation of man's existence here 
on earth, no interpretation of life that will satisfy the 
reason, no object that will give full swing to the 
powers of the soul or bring peace and serene content- 
ment to the heart. 

This has been the Catholic view of man from the 
beginning, and its importance cannot be overesti- 



Man from a catholic view 247 

mated. It lies at the very root of religion, and any 
error or shadow of error here vitiates and distorts the 
entire cycle of relations of man to his God. The 
ideas of man and God are correlative and inseparable 
— they come and go together, and a defective knowl- 
edge of the one necessarily implies an imperfect 
understanding of the other. The power of apprehend- 
ing and understanding relations between cause and 
effect, of adapting and adjusting means to an end 
is, if not the very definition of intelligence and free 
will, at least their adequate description. And in this 
man is like unto God, whose presence, shut out from 
us by the veil of the visible universe, is luminously 
revealed in the laws by which the universe is gov- 
erned and in the order and beauty which bring the 
operation of these laws within the domain of sense 
and through sense to the intelligence of man. Such, 
according to the Catholic idea, is the nobility, such 
the dignity and pre-eminence of man. He is set as 
a king over the created things of earth, yet respon- 
sible for the use of them to the God who gave him 
so royal a supremacy. 

INTELLECT, WILL AND IMMORTALITY. 

Intellect and will and the immortality of the soul 
are, the Catholic says, the three natural endowments 
which in man are the image of God. These perfec- 
tions all men have in common with Adam. But Adam 
had a superadded perfection. He was, as the Coun- 
cil of Trent says, "holy and just", or pleasing to God. 
This supernatural perfection is called, and is as a mat- 
ter of fact, sanctifying grace, which made Adam's 



248 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

likeness to God pure, more perfect and transcending 
than any natural gift, no matter how excellent, in 
that it lifted him above his own nature into a higher 
and diviner life and establishes him in the love and 
friendship of God. We are told by St. Paul that as one 
man by his offense wrought the condemnation of all, 
so did our lord by his justice work the justification of 
all. What Adam forfeited Christ regained. What 
Christ regained St. Paul tells us, is the privilege of 
being the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ and 
of this, he says, the Holy Ghost giveth testimony. 
Christ, therefore, restored what had been lost, pur- 
chased with his blood what had been forfeited by sin. 
Through him man regained the sonship and friend- 
ship of God, and is, or can be if he will, constituted 
in the supernatural life of grace. Hence these priv- 
ileges being a restoration of what had been, were the 
prerogatives of Adam. That man was so lifted up 
into a serener atmosphere and a diviner life, and 
made in a sense god-like, is not merely an opinion of 
the Theologians, but an integral part of the teaching 
of the Church. 

And this brings out clearly the distinction and dif- 
ference between Pantheism and the teaching of 
Catholic theology. The fundamental error of Panthe- 
ism is the necessary identity and equality of the divine 
nature and the human, and the consequent deification 
of man; whereas, Catholic theology teaches that the 
participation of the divine nature, through grace, is 
in no wise due to man, is no part of the integrity 
of his nature, and could not become man's by any 
effort or exercise of his aptitudes and powers. But 



MAN FROM A CATHOLIC VIEW 249 

that which is not due to him, and which he could of 
himself in no way attain, is the free, spontaneous and 
gracious gift of God. 

THE FALL OF ADAM. 

God put Adam on trial, as He had done the angels. 
He put his humility to the proof. He gave him an 
opportunity to show himself worthy his inheritance 
and manifold benedictions. He exacted but a nom- 
inal acknowledgment, by which He reserved His 
right. His very generosity and goodness, which 
should have filled the heart of Adam with an unceas- 
ing song of praise and thanksgiving and an abiding 
memory of his surpassing privileges, seemed, if I may 
use the word, a temptation to his weakness, in spite 
of the many stays and supports by which his will was 
steadied and strengthened. Forgetting his lowly es- 
tate and unmindful of his blessings, he wantonly 
transgressed the light command that had been laid 
upon him as a test of his fidelity and gratitude. And 
man's first sin was committed and the human race, 
in its Head, was cut off from the friendship of God 
and cast out from an inheritance of countless bene- 
dictions. Original justice was forfeited, and to it, as 
its opposite, succeeded original sin, which thereby 
became the heritage of all mankind. The transgres- 
sion of the law in Adam was our sin. We are not, 
indeed, guilty of Adam's actual and personal sin, 
since our wills had no part in its commission; nor 
can original sin in Adam's descendants be called sin 
in the strict and rigorous sense of that word. These 
terms denote the state to which Adam's sin reduced 



250 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OP RELIGIONS 

his children. The act by which sin is committed is 
one thing; but the estate to which man is reduced by 
the commission of that sin is quite another. The 
one was transitory in character; the other is perma- 
nent, and man is rightly called a sinner as long as he 
abides in a state which is the consequence of sin. 
Adam, by his act of disobedience, turned from God 
and forfeited his supernatural prerogative of sanctify- 
ing grace, and his posterity in consequence is born 
into the state of deprivation or original sin, which 
was the penalty of his offense. Excepting that the 
blessed virgin, who by special privilege and because 
of her high office, had the fullness of grace from the 
first moment of her existence, all the children of 
Adam at their birth are under the disability of his 
transgression. He was the head of the human fam- 
ily, and in him was contained the whole human race. 

FORFEITED PRIVILEGES RESTORED. 

Man having forfeited the supernatural life, it was 
impossible for him by his own efforts to again enter 
upon it. It was simply beyond his powers. His 
condition was one of deprivation, of what was not a 
part of his nature, to which, as man, he had no right 
or claim, and which he could not regain by any power 
of his own. Yet it must not be supposed that man's 
nature was by such loss corrupted or poisoned in its 
root. His intellect was still intact in all its natural 
powers, though less luminous, less penetrating and 
more liable to error because of the absence of the 
supernatural light that had been put out in the soul. 
His will was vacillating and unsteady, yet free and 



MAN FROM A CATHOLIC VIEW 2$I 

potent to choose between right and wrong, good and 
evil. He is incapable, in his foreign state, of making 
reparation for his offense or of recovering sanctifying 
grace. God might have left man in this condition 
of exile with the evidences and" tokens upon him of 
high lineage and noble descent, yet disinherited and 
stripped of his supernatural gifts and with only the 
hope of such reward as his natural virtues might merit. 
But in his great mercy, which is beyond bound or 
measure, God restored to him his forfeited privileges 
and gave him the means of again living a supernatural 
life and of entering into the eternal inheritance for 
which such life is a preparation. "His exceeding 
charity," says St. Paul, "wherewith he loved us when 
we were dead in sin, hath quickened us together in 
Christ, by whose grace you are saved." Again: God 
could have waived his right to a satisfaction involving 
the death of his divine son, but this he did not see fit 
to do. In his infinite wisdom he required an atone- 
ment adequate to the offense committed, and this 
could be made only by one equal in dignity to him- 
self. And this is precisely what was accomplished in 
the incarnation of the son of God. Heaven and 
earth touched, "mercy and truth met, justice and 
peace kissed;" God and man were linked together in 
the bonds of indissoluble union. The sufferings and 
blood of Christ, though only his human nature 
suffered, had a divine value, because the acts take 
on the character of the person, and the person who 
suffered was divine. By this mystery of love the 
right of man to enter again into his forfeited inherit- 



252 THE WORLD'"? CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ance was purchased. In Christ the heavenly har- 
mony of our nature was restored. 

WILL OF CHRIST THE SUPREME GUIDE. 

Christ, of his own free will and divine condescen- 
sion, wrought the redemption of the human race, and 
he is therefore free to convey its fruits to man in any 
way he in his wisdom sees fit. The primary and sov- 
ereign rule of belief and practice in all things pertain- 
ing to the economy of God with man is, the Catholic 
holds, the will of Christ, and not what seems fitting, 
cr best, or most reasonable to us. The will of Christ, 
once it is known, must be the supreme rule and guide. 
Hence, relying on the words of Christ and his Apos- 
tles, and on the living voice and universal and un- 
broken tradition of the Church from the beginning, 
the Catholic says that Christ instituted certain spe- 
cific rites, now 7 called Sacraments, as means and instru- 
ments to convey the fruits of redemption to the soul; 
that the initial Sacrament, by which the supernatural 
life is born in man, is Baptism, and that this life is 
nourished, increased and perfected by the indwelling 
of the Holy Ghost in the soul, by the generosity of 
our own hearts and wills, and by the graces conveyed 
through the other six Sacraments and the aids they 
supply, according to the dispositions, the needs and 
the conditions of men and of society. Through this 
supernatural gift man takes on a new nature and be- 
gins a new life. 

But this life, so precious and so full of promise, 
so elevated, ennobling and refining, giving so luminous 
an interpretation of man and his surroundings and 



MAN FROM A CATHOLIC VIEW 253 

leading on to life eternal, may be enfeebled by neglect 
of its privileges and wholly lost by mortal sin. Sin 
and sanctifying grace are as opposite as darkness and 
light. The presence of sin is the extinction of the 
spiritual life. In the moment that mortal sin enters 
the soul through deliberate consent of will the in- 
dwelling of spirit of God and sanctifying grace depart, 
and the soul is spiritually dead. The treasure of 
great price thus bartered for some bauble of lust or 
pride by a merciful and gracious dispensation of Christ 
may be restored through an act of perfect love of God 
or through divinely inspired sorrow and the grace of 
the sacrament of penance. For one guilty of sin com- 
mitted after baptism the sacrament of penance does 
precisely what baptism does for one yet in original 
sin — in this sense, that it restores and renews the 
supernatural life in a soul that is spiritually dead. 

CATHOLIC IDEA OF MAN. 

It is clear, then, that the Catholic idea of man is 
this: That he is instinctively supernatural in his ca- 
pacities and powers, his attitudes and cravings, his 
aspirations and aims, and that he was so constituted 
from the beginning; that no created object can fill 
the void of his heart or still the cry of his soul; that 
he cannot work out his evident destiny or accomplish 
the purpose of his creation without being grafted into 
the Spiritual Vine, which is Christ, and drawing from 
it the sap and the sustenance of his spiritual exist- 
ence. To the Catholie the Supernatuial is the true 
and only adequate interpretation of man's life; to 
him every thought, word and action has a supernat- 



254 THE world's congress of religions 

ural and momentous significance, the knowledge and 
will of the agent being the measure of their malice 
or their merit. To him they have no real value unless 
they are in conformity with the law of God, luminous 
in His intellect, written in his heart and articulate in 
his conscience. His whole being is encompassed by 
the supernatural and by a sense of responsibility to 
his Creator and God. He believes that the intellect, 
if not taught of God through the living and magisterial 
voice of the church, the pillar and ground of the truth, 
will cease to be a light and a guide to the will, and, 
being once perverted, will be the cause and source of 
countless errors of judgment and practical life. To 
him divine truth and a divinely appointed teacher are 
a first principle. 

To the Catholic, the acceptance of God as a divine 
teacher, and a belief in His revelation, lie at the basis 
of religion and are the beginning of a justification. 
Faith, and the truths it contains as proposed by the 
church, the custodian of divine truth and its living 
voice and infallible interpreter, an exact, precise, 
dogmatic faith, a living, active, energetic and prac- 
tical faith, pervades his whole being and influences 
and gives character to his least as well as his most 
significant action. And next, as a consequence of 
faith and the body of truth it contains, come the 
commandments of God, or those rules of conduct 
which guide and direct him in justice and truth and 
in his manifold duties and varied relations to God 
and man. And then, to follow the logical order, 
comes grace, in which every man born into this world 
Jives and moves; which encompasses him as an at- 



MAN FROM A CATHOLIC VIEW 255 

mosphere; which God gives in amplest measure to 
every man who sincerely wishes to be converted and 
live; which is an antecedent condition to the super- 
natural life, its beginning, its cause, its sustaining 
principle and its perfection, and which unites man to 
God as a child to his Eternal Father by a bond as 
intimate as is possible between the Creator and his 
creature. By this rule, says the Catholic, shall man 
live; by this rule shall he be judged. 



CHAPTER XVI 
SOCIAL PURITY 

BY FRANCIS E. WILLARD 

[The following paper, entitled "A White Life for Two," was con- 
tributed by Miss Frances E.Willard, president of the World's Woman's 
Christian Temperance Union.] 

I dare affirm that the reciprocal attraction of two 
natures, out of a thousand million for each other, is 
the strongest", though one of the most unnoted proofs 
of a beneficent Creator. It is the fairest, sweetest 
rose of tirne, whose petals and whose perfume expand 
so far that we are enclosed and sheltered in their ten- 
derness and beauty. For, folded in its heart, we 
find the germ of every home; of those beatitudes, 
fatherhood and motherhood; the brotherly and sis- 
terly affection, the passion of the patriot, the calm 
and steadfast love of the philanthropist. For the 
faithfulness of two, each to the other, alone makes 
possible the true home, the pure church, the right- 
eous nation, the great, kind brotherhood of man. 
These are the days when creeds are discounted, but 
here is a creed to which we subscribe: 

Comfort our souls with love, 

Love of all human kind. 
Love special, close, in which, like sheltered dove, 

Each heart its own safe nest may find; 
And love that turns above adoringly, contented to resign 

All loves if need be, for the love divine. 
250 



SOCIAL PURITV 257 

Marriage is not, as some surface thinkers have en- 
deavored to make out, an episode in man's life and 
an event in woman's. Any who hold this view should 
sup their fill of horrors on the daily records of suicides 
by young men who are lovers, of sweethearts shot and 
murdered wives. Marriage is no unequal covenant; 
it is the sum of earthly weal or woe to him or her who 
shares this mystic sacrament. Doubtless there are in 
modern lands and in this age of transition almost as 
many noble men unmated because they had to be as 
there are women. Because of a memory cherished, 
and estrangement unexplained, an ideal unrealized, 
a duty bravely met, many of the best men living go 
their way through life alone. Sometimes I think 
that of the two it is man who loves home best; for 
while woman is hedged into it by a thousand consid- 
erations of expediency and prejudice, he "with all the 
world before him where to choose," still chooses 
home freely and royally for her sake, who is to him 
the world's supreme attraction. 

SUBLIME RECORDS OF THE PAST. 

The past has bequeathed us no records more sub- 
lime than the heart-histories of Dante, of Petrarch, 
of Michael Angelo, and, in our own time of Washing- 
ton Irving and Henry Martyn and others whom we 
dare not name. It was a chief among our own poets 
who said: 

I look upon the stormy wild, 

I have no wife, I have no child; 

For me there gleams no household hearth, 

I've none to love me on the earth. 

Congress of Religions 17 



258 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

We know that "he who wrote home's sweetest 
song ne'er had one of his own," and our household 
poet, Will Carleton, sang concerning John Howard 
Payne — 

Sure, when thy gentle spirit fled, 

To lands beyond the azure dome, 
With arms outstretched God's angel said, 
"Welcome to heaven's home, sweet home." 

There are men and women — some of them famous, 
some unknown — the explanation of whose uncompan- 
ioned lives may be found in the principle that under- 
lies those memorable words applied to Washington: 
"Heaven left him childless that a nation might call him 
father." In such considerations as I have here urged, 
and in this noblest side of human nature, a constant 
factor always to be counted on, I found my faith in 
the response of the people to the worth of promoting 
social purity. "Sweet bells jangled out of tune," 
now fill the air with minor cadences, often, alas, with 
discords that are heartbreaks, but all the same 
they are "sweet bells" and shall chime the gladdest 
music heaven has heard, "some sweet day, by and 
by." This gentle age into which we have happily 
been born is attuning the twain whom God hath made 
for such great destiny to higher harmonies than any 
other age has known by a reform in the denaturaliz- 
ing methods of a civilization largely based on force 
by which the boy and girl have hitherto been sedu- 
lously trained apart. They are now being set side by 
side in school, in church, in government, even as 
God sets male and female everywhere side by side 
throughout his realm of law and has declared them 
one throughout his realm of grace. 



SOCIAL PURITY 259 

TWO-FOLD HEADSHIP OF THE HOME. 

Meanwhile the conquest, through invention, of mat- 
ter by mind lifts woman from the unnatural subjuga- 
tion of the age of force. In the presence of a steam 
engine, which she could guide as well as he, but 
which is an equal mystery to both, the man and wo- 
man learn that they are fast equalizing on the plane 
of matter, as a prediction of their confessed equaliza- 
tion upon the planes of mind and of morality. 

We are then beginning to train those with each 
other who were formed for each other, and the Eng- 
lish-speaking home, with its Christian method of a 
two-fold headship, based on laws natural and divine, 
is steadily rooting out all that remains of the mediae- 
val, continental and harem philosophies concerning this 
greatest problem of all time. The true relations of 
that complex being whom God created by uttering 
the mystic thought that had in it the potency of par- 
adise, "In our own image let us make man and let 
him have dominion over all the earth," will ere long 
be ascertained by means of the new correlation and 
attuning, each to other, of a more complete humanity 
upon the Christ-like basis that "there shall be no more 
curse." The temperance reform is this correlation's 
necessary and true forerunner, for while the race- 
brain is bewildered it cannot be thought out. The 
labor reform is another part, for only under co-opera 
tion can material conditions be adjusted to anoncom- 
batant state of society, and every yoke lifted from 
the laboring man lifts one still heavier from the wo- 
man at his side, The equal suffrage movement is an- 



26o THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

other part, for a government organized and con- 
ducted by one-half of the human unit, a government 
of the minority, by the minority, for the minority, 
must always bear unequally upon the whole. The 
social purity movement could only come after its 
heralds, the other three reforms I have mentioned, 
were well under way, because alcoholized brains 
would not tolerate its expression; women who had 
not learned to work would lack the individuality and 
intrepidity required to organize it, and women per- 
petually to be disfranchised could not hope to see 
its final purpose wrought out in law. But back of 
all were the father and mother of all reform — Chris- 
tianity and education — to blaze the way for all these 
later comers. 

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT. 

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is doing 
no work more important than that of reconstructing the 
ideal of womanhood. The sculptor, Hart, told me, 
when I visited his studio in Florence many years ago, 
that he was investing his life in the attempt to work 
into marble a new feminine type which should "ex- 
press, unblamed, the twentieth century's woman- 
hood." The Venus de Medici, with its small head 
and buttonhole eyelids, matched the Greek concep- 
tion of woman well, he thought, but America was 
slowly evolving another and a loftier type. A statue, 
named by him "Woman Triumphant" and purchased 
by patriotic ladies of his native state, Kentucky, 
adorns the city hall at Lexington and shows 

A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort and command,. 



SOCIAL PURITY 26l 

A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food, 
And yet a spirit pure and bright, 
With something of an angel's light. 

She is the embodiment of what shall be. In an 
age of force, woman's greatest grace was to cling; 
in this age of peace she doesn't cling much, but is 
every bit as tender and as sweet as if she did. She 
has strength and individuality, a gentle seriousness; 
there is more of a sister, less of the syren — more of 
the duchess, and less of the doll. Woman is becom- 
ing what God meant her to be, and Christ's gospel 
necessitates her being, the companion and counselor, 
not the encumbrance and toy, of men. 

To meet this new creation, how grandly men them- 
selves are growing; how considerate and brotherly, 
how pure in word and deed ! The world has never yet 
known half the aptitude of character and life to which 
men will attain when they and women live in the same 
world. It doth not yet appear what they shall be, or 
we either for that matter, but in many a home pre- 
sided over by a temperance voter and a white-ribbon 
worker, I have thought the heavenly vision was really 
coming down to terra firma. With all my heart I 
believe, as do the best men of the nation, that woman 
will bless and brighten every place she enters, and 
that she will enter every place. Its welcome of her 
presence and her power will be the final test of any 
institution's fitness to survive. 

PROGRESS OF SOCIAL PURITY. 

Happily for us, every other genuine reform helps 
to push forward the white car of social purity. The 



262 THE WORLD *S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

great peace movement, seeking as its final outcome a 
court of international arbitration as a substitute for 
war, promises more momentum to our home cause 
than to almost any other. For as the chief corner- 
stone of the peaceful state is the hearthstone, so the 
chief pulverizer of that corner-stone is war. 

The personal habits of men and women must reach 
the same high level. On a low plane and for selfish 
ends, primeval and mediaeval, man wrought out, with 
fiercest cruelty, virtue as the only tolerated estate of 
one-half the human race. On a high plane Chris- 
tianity, working through modern womanhood, shall 
yet make virtue the only tolerated estate of the other 
half of the human race, and may heaven speed that 
day! To-day a woman knows that she must walk 
the straight line of a white life or men will look upon 
her with disdain. A man needs, for his own best 
good, to find that in the eyes of woman, just the 
same is true of him — and evermore be it remembered, 
this earnest effort to bring in the day of "sweeter 
manners, purer laws," is as much in man's interest 
as our own. 

Why are the laws so shamelessly unequal now? 
Why do they bear so heavily upon the weaker, mak- 
ing the punishment for stealing away a woman's 
honor no greater than that for stealing a silk gown: 
purloining her character at a smaller penalty than the 
picking of a pocket would incur? Why is the age of 
protection or consent but ten years in twenty states 
of America, and in one only seven years? Who 
would have supposed, when man's great physical 
strength is considered, that he would have fixed upon 



SOCIAL PURITY 263 

an age so tender and declared that after a child had 
reached it she could be held equally accountable with 
her doughty assailant for a crime in which he was the 
aggressor? And who would not suppose that the man 
who had been false to one woman would be socially 
ostracized by all the rest of womankind? What will 
explain the cruelty of man and the heartlessness of 
woman in this overmastering issue of womanhood's 
protection and manhood's loyalty? 

TOO EASY FOR MEN TO DO WRONG. 

The answer is not far to seek. Woman became, 
in barbarous ages, the subjects of the stronger. Be- 
sides, what suits one age becomes a hindrance to the 
next, and as Christianity went on individualizing 
woman, lifting her to higher levels of education and 
hence of power, the very laws which good men in 
the past had meant for her protection became to her 
a snare and danger. But while all this heritage of a 
less developed past has wrought such anguish and in- 
justice upon woman as she is to-day, it has been 
even more harmful to man, for it is always worse for 
character to be sinning than to be sinned against. 
Our laws and social customs make it too easy for 
men to do wrong. They are not sufficiently pro- 
tected by the strong hand of penalty, from themselves, 
from the sins that do most easily beset them, and 
from the mad temptations that clutch at them on 
every side. Suppose the tramplers of wives and 
outragers of women, whose unutterable abominations 
crowd the criminal columns of our newspapers each 
day, knew that lifelong imprisonment might be the 



264 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

penalty that they must pay, would not the list of 
their victims rapidly diminish? The World's Chris- 
tian Temperance Union has taken up this sacred cause 
of protection of the home, and we shall never cease 
our efforts until women have all the help that law 
can furnish them throughout the world. We ask for 
heavier penalties, and that the age of consent be 
raised to 18 years; we ask for the total prohibition 
of the liquor traffic, which is leagued with every crime 
that is perpetrated against the physically weaker sex, 
and ask for the ballot that law and law-maker may 
be directly influenced by our instincts of self protec- 
tion and home protection. 

PHYSICAL CULTURE FOR GIRLS. 

We hear much of physical culture for boys, but it 
is girls that need this most. We hear much of man- 
ual training schools to furnish every boy at school 
with a bread-winning weapon, but in the interest of 
boys and girls alike, girls need this most. Hence it 
is in our plans to work for these. But, as I have 
said, we are not working for ourselves alone in this 
great cause of social purity. As an impartial friend 
to the whole human race in both its factions, man 
and woman, I, for one, am not more in earnest for 
this great advance because of the good it brings to 
the gentler than' because of the blessing that it proph- 
esies for the stronger sex. I have long believed 
that when that greatest of all questions, the question 
of a life companionship, shall be decided on its merits, 
pure and simple, and not complicated with the other 
questions, "Did she get a good home?" "Is he a 






SOCIAL PURITY 265 

generous provider ?" "Will she have plenty of money?" 
then will come the first fair chance ever enjoyed by 
young manhood for the building up of genuine char- 
acter and conduct. For it is an immense temptation 
to the "sowing of wild oats" when the average youth 
knows that the smile he covets most will be his all 
the same, no matter whether he smokes, swears, 
drinks beer and leads an impure life, or not. The 
knowledge on his part that the girls of his village, or 
"set," have no way out of dependence, reproach or 
oddity, except to say "yes," when he chooses to 
"propose;" that they dare not frown on his lower 
mode of life; that the world is, indeed, all before 
him where to choose; that not one girl in one hundred 
is endowed with the talent and pluck that make her 
independent of him and his ilk. All this gives him 
a sense of freedom to do wrong, which, added to in- 
herited appetite and outward temptation, is impel- 
ling to ruin the youth of our day with force strong as 
gravitation and relentless as fate. 

ADVANTAGE OF CO-EDUCATION. 

Besides all this, the utterly false sense of his own 
value and importance which "young England" or 
"young America" acquires by seeing the sweetest and 
most attractive beings on the face of the earth thus 
virtually subject to him, often develops a lordliness of 
manner which is ridiculous to contemplate in boys 
who otherwise would be modest, sensible and broth- 
erly young fellows, such as we are, most of all, likely 
to find in co-educational schools, where girls take 
their full share of prizes, and where many young 



266 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

women have in mind a world trip with some girl 
friend, or mayhap a "career." 

Multiplied forces of law and gospel are to-day con- 
spiring for the deliverance of our young men from the 
snares of their present artificial environment and exag- 
gerated estimate of their own value; but the elevation 
of their sisters to the plane of perfect financial and 
legal independence, from which the girls can dictate 
the equitable terms: "You must be as pure and true 
as you require me to be, ere I give you my hand," is 
the brightest hope that gleams in the sky of modern 
civilization for our brothers; and the greater freedom 
of women to make of marriage an affair of the heart 
and not of the purse is the supreme result of Chris- 
tianity up to this hour. 

There is no man whom women honor so deeply and 
sincerely as the man of chaste life — the man who 
breasts the buffetings of temptation's swelling waves, 
like some strong swimmer in his agony, and makes 
the port of perfect self control. Women have a 
thousand guarantees and safeguards for their purity 
of life. "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here," is 
written in letters of flame for them above the haunt 
of infamy, while men may come and go and are yet 
similarly received in the most attractive homes. And 
yet, thank God, in spite of this accursed latitude, 
how many men are pure and true. 

HOME, SWEET HOME. 

It is said that when darkness settles on the Adriatic 
sea, and fishermen are far from land, their wives and 
daughters, just before putting out the lights of their 



SOCIAL PURITY 267 

humble cottages go down by the shore, and in their 
clear, sweet voices sing the first lines of the "Ave 
Maria." Then they listen eagerly, and across the 
sea are borne to them the deep tones of those they 
love, singing the strains that follow, "Oro pro nobis," 
and thus each knows that with the other all is well. 
I often think that from the home-life of the nation, 
from its mothers and sisters, daughters and sweet- 
hearts, there sound through the darkness of this tran- 
sition age the tender notes of a dearer song, whose 
burden is being taken up and echoed back to us from 
those far out amid the billows of temptation, and 
its sacred words are, "Home, Sweet Home!" God 
grant that deeper and stronger may grow that 
heavenly chorus from men's and women's lips and 
lives. For with all its faults, and they are many, I 
believe the present marriage system to be the great- 
est triumph of Christianity, and that it has created 
and conserves more happy homes than the world has 
ever before known. 

Any law that renders less binding the mutual life- 
long loyalty of one man and woman to each other, 
which is the central idea of every home, is an un- 
mitigated curse to that home and to humanity. 
Around this union, which alone renders possible a 
pure society and a permanent state, the law should 
build its utmost safeguards, and upon this union the 
gospel should pronounce its most sacred benedictions. 
But while I hold these truths to be self-evident I be- 
lieve that a constant evolution is going forward in 
the home, as in every other place, and that we may 
have but dimly dreamed the good in store for those 



268 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

whom God for holiest love hath made. In the nature 
of the case the most that even Christianity itself 
could do at first, though it is the strongest force ever 
let loose upon the planet, was to separate one man 
and one woman from the common herd into each 
home, telling the woman to work there in grateful 
quietness, while the man stood at the door to defend 
its sacred shrine with fist and spear, to insist upon its 
rights of property, and later on to represent it in the 
state. 

SUBJECTION OF WOMAN TO MAN. 

Thus, under the conditions of a civilization, crude 
and material, grew up that well-worn maxim of the 
common law, " Husband and wife are one, and that 
one is the husband." But such supreme power as 
this brought to the man supreme temptation. By 
the laws of mind he legislated first for himself and 
afterward for the physically weaker one within "his" 
home. The femme couverte is not a character ap- 
propriate to our peaceful, home-like communities, 
although she may have been and doubtless was a 
necessary figure in the days when women were safe 
only as they were shut up in castles and when they 
were the booty chiefly sought in war. To-day a wo- 
man may circumnavigate the world alone and yet be 
unmolested. Our marriage laws and customs are 
changing to meet these new conditions. 

It will not do to give the husband of the modern 
woman power to whip his wife, "provided the stick 
he uses is not larger than his finger;" to make all the 
laws under which she is to live; adjudicate all her 



SOCIAL PURITY 269 

penalties, try her before juries of men, conduct her 
to prison under the care of men, cast the ballot for 
her, and, in general, hold her in the estate of a per- 
petual minor. It will not do to let the modern man 
determine the age of "consent," settle the penalties 
that men shall suffer whose indignities and outrages 
upon women are worse to them than death, and by 
his exclusive power to make the laws and choose all 
officers, legislative, judicial and executive, thus leaving 
his case wholly in his own hands. To continue this 
method is to make it as hard as possible for men to 
do right, and as easy as possible for them to do 
wrong; the magnificent possibilities of manly char- 
acter are best prophesied from the fact that under 
such a system so many men are good and gracious. 
My theory of marriage in its relation to society would 
give this postulate: Husband and wife are one, and 
that one is husband and wife. I believe they will 
never come to the heights of purity, of power and 
peace for which they were designed in heaven until 
this better law prevails. One undivided half of the 
world for wife and husband equally; co-education to 
mate them on the plane of mind; equal property 
rights to make God's own free woman, not coerced 
into marriage for the sake of support, nor a bond 
slave after she is married, who asks her master for 
the price of a paper of pins, and gives him back the 
change. 

UNIFORM NATIONAL MARRIAGE LAWS. 

I believe in uniform national marriage laws; in 
divorce for one cause only ; in legal separation on 
account of drunkenness and other abominations; 



270 THE WORLDS CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

but I would guard, for the children's sake, the mar- 
riage tie by every guarantee that could make it at the 
top of society, the most coveted estate of the largest 
natured and most endowed, rather than at the bot- 
tom, the necessary refuge of the smallest natured and 
most dependent women. Besides all this, in the in- 
terest of men, in order that their incentives to the 
best life might be raised to the highest power, I would 
make women so independent of marriage that men 
who, by bad habits and niggardly estate, whether 
physical, mental or moral, were least adapted to help 
build a race of human angels, should find the facility 
with which they now enter its hallowed precincts re- 
duced to the lowest minimum. 

Until God's laws are better understood and more 
reverently obeyed, marriage cannot reach its best. 
The present abnormal style of dress among women 
heavily mortgages the future of their homes and more 
heavily discounts that of their children. Add to this 
the utter recklessness of immoral consequences that 
characterizes the mutual conduct of so many married 
pairs, and only the everlasting tendencies toward good 
that render certain the existence and supremacy of a 
goodness that is infinite, can explain so much health 
and happiness as our reeling old world persists in 
holding while it rolls onward toward some far-off per- 
fection, bathed in the sunshine of God's omnipotent 
love. Our Boston woman poet, Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe, has given us the noblest motto for social 
purity: 

In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born across the sea; 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me; 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, 
While God is marching on. 



CHAPTER XVII 
IDEALISM, THE NEW RELIGION 

BY DR. ADOLPH BRODBECK 

[Dr, Adolph Brodbeck of Hanover, Germany, took the immense 
audience by storm when he began the reading of his address entitled 
"Idealism; the New Religion." He was frequently interrupted by 
applause and his words held the close attention of all the distinguished 
delegates who sat on the platform. Representatives of the non-Chris- 
tian faiths smiled approval at the doctor's vigorous statements and 
the scholars of dogmatic religion winced when the German scientist 
said:] 

It is an open secret that millions of people in our 
civilized countries have practically given up Chris- 
tianity and with it religion. Millions of others cling 
to the old belief only because there is nothing better 
there. Again, millions are believers in Christianity 
or other religions because they have been educated in 
those lines and do hot know better. The time has 
come for a new form of religion in which the painful 
discord between modern civilization and old belief 
disappears, and bright harmony is placed instead. It 
would be a great mistake to think that only against 
Christianity the new religion is directed. It is di- 
rected against all other religions, as far as they differ 
from the new religion. We are not heathens or Jews 
or Mahommadens or Buddhists or Christians, and 
more especially neither Catholics nor Protestants nor 



272 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Methodists nor holders of any other forms of Chris- 
tianity. We also do not revive any old religion that 
may have existed or still exists. 

The new religion is not a mixture or synopsis of 
previous religions. The new religion is not a phil- 
osophical system of any kind; it is not atheism, not 
pantheism, not theism, not deism, not materialism, 
not spiritualism, not naturalism, not realism, not mys- 
ticism, not Freemasonry, nor is it any form of so- 
called philosophical idealism. It is not rationalism 
or supernaturalism; not skepticism or agnosticism. 
It is not optimism and not pessimism; also not stoi- 
cism and not epicurism; nor is it any combination of 
those philosophical doctrines. It is also not positiv- 
ism and not Darwinism or evolutionism. It is not mor- 
alism and is also not synonymous with philanthro- 
phism or humanitarianism. 

IDEALISM IS ITS NAME. 

In short, the new religion is something new. Its 
name is Idealism. Its confessors are called Idealists. 
The aim of this new religion is soon explained. Its 
chief aim is idealism, that is, the striving for the 
ideal, the perfection in everything, for the ideal of 
mankind, especially for each individual; further, for 
the ideal of science and art, for the ideal of civiliza- 
tion, for the ideal of all virtues, for the ideal of the 
family, community, society, and humanity in all forms. 
All those who work already in this line, or are willing 
to work for it, are our friends and in fact our members. 
Every political man who does his best for his people 
is our friend. Every earnest and sincere scientist is 



IDEALISM, THE NEW RELIGION 273 

our assistant. Every noble artist is our helpmate. 
Every business-man and manufacturer, every respect- 
able and hard-working man or woman is our co- 
worker. All good children are our best friends and 
we are theirs. A noble father, a careful mother are in- 
closed in our holy circle. The honest poor, the sick 
and widows and orphans, the deserted and lonely peo- 
ple are especially welcome, and shall benefit from 
our practical idealism, which means not consolation 
for the future but practical help for this life. All 
masters and teachers, tutors and governesses, are 
our fellows, if they work in the spirit of our idealism. 
Even all priests of all religions are our friends, so far 
as they theoretically and practically agree with our 
principles. All the rich and wealthy are our friends, 
if they practically agree to our religion. 

The new religion is not aggressive but creative and 
reforming. It has nothing to do with anarchism or 
revolutionism. It works not with force but with or- 
ganization, example, doctrine. If attacked it de- 
fends itself with all means permitted by our prin- 
ciples, and if undermined by secret agitation or by 
open crime it does not give way. Faithful to ideal- 
ism unto death is our device. Our enemies are the 
dogmatic in all forms; our enemies are also all who 
are opposed to idealism, that is, especially the lazy 
and the unjust. We hate hypocrisy in all its forms, 
cruelty and vice, and crime of all sorts. We are not 
for absolute abstaining from stimulants as long as 
science has not absolutely decided against them; but 
we are friendly to all temperance societies. We are 
not in favor of extremes; in most cases virtue is the 

Congress of Religions 18 



274 THE world's congress of religions 

middle between extremes. We do not profess to 
have any certain knowledge of things beyond this 
life. 

BELIEVE IN AN ABSOLUTE POWER. 

We believe there is an absolute power over which 
we have no control. The true essence of this power 
we do not know. With some reserve the words 
Providence, "Almighty," "Creator," might be used, 
but we do not believe there exists an absolute per- 
sonal being as a kind of individual. We do not make 
any man or woman to be a God, and we do not be- 
lieve in a God becoming a man; but we assume there 
are great differences in men, and that some do more 
for the benefit of mankind and true civilization than 
others, but it is not advisable to ascribe that to spec- 
ial merits of such a person. If somebody is born a 
genius, and finds favorable conditions of develop- 
ment, it is not his merit. 

We believe in the great value of a good example for 
followers more than in doctrines. But we do not 
worship anybody, nor any single object, nor any pro- 
duct of human imagination as being God. We do 
not know how things originated, or if they did origi- 
nate at all; so we also do not know what will be the 
last end and aim of everything existing, if there is 
anything like last end and aim at all. At any rate 
these are open questions and science is allowed to 
discuss them freely. We do not believe there is res- 
urrection of human individuals. We do not believe 
there is immortality of the individual as such. We 
leave it to science to decide how far there can be any- 



IDEALISM, THE NEW RELIGION 275 

thing like existence after death. We do not believe 
in heaven as the dwelling of individuals after death; 
astronomy is against such a belief. We do not believe 
in hell, nor a personal leader of it, nor in purgatory. 
Bat we acknowledge willingly the relative truth of 
those and similar dogmas. We do not believe that 
once everything was good and perfect in this 
world. We do not believe that all evils came into 
the world through man's fault, although a good many 
of them did. We do not consider the world irrepa- 
rable. We take everything as it is and try to improve 
it if possible. We do not believe in the possibility 
of absolute perfection of any body or any thing. We 
do not think that every good deed finds its proper 
reward, nor do we think that every wrong deed is 
properly punished. 

But as a whole, we believe that doing good deeds 
brings about good things, and that wrong-doing is a 
failure in the end. What is once done can never be 
undone by any power; the only thing is that it can be 
practically forgotten, and, in some cases, the bad 
consequences avoided, 

WOULD SECURE A MEASURE OF HAPPINESS. 

We do not know where we came from or where 
we go; we only know that we are here on this planet 
and that we must take things as they are, and that 
we must do our best in everything; and in doing this 
we are happy, as far as happiness reasonably can be 
expected to be attained by man. We do not expect 
to much from this life and world, so we are not dis- 
appointed at the end. Prayer we admit only as a rev- 






276 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

erent immersion in the great mystery of this life and 
world. Prayer for anything that is against the nat- 
ural course of things we think unreasonable. We do 
not hide established facts from anybody. But we 
think that certain things ought not to be taught before 
the proper time of appreciation has come. In social 
as well as in political things we believe there must be 
order and liberty combined. We do not think that 
all members of human society are equally able for 
social or political roles. We are not in favor of war 
if it ever can be avoided without disregarding honor 
and duty of honorable existence. We believe the 
new religion called Idealism can and ought to be 
adopted by all nations and people; that it does not 
depend on climate nor on certain degrees of civiliza- 
tion. 

We believe love is necessary for everything, but 
we believe that love alone, either to God or to our 
fellow creatures or to both, is not a sufficient funda- 
mental principle for true religion. We believe mak- 
ing money is useful for many things. We believe 
man is not born only to suffer, nor only to work, but 
also to enjoy reasonably this life. We believe bodily 
exercise is necessary during our whole life. We be- 
lieve that, as a rule, only in a sound body a sound 
soul can exist, or what is meant by the word soul. We 
believe that all men, male and female, are born of 
a mother, live shorter or longer, and die at the end 
of their life and thereby finish their individual circle. 
We do not fear death, nor do we fear life. We be- 
lieve that everything should be done to make children 
happy and healthy as long and as much as they ever 



IDEALISM, THE NEW RELIGION 277 

can be, and we hold that this is a special task of our 
religion. We believe that for some people it is easier 
to be good or to become good than for others. We 
believe that no name given by man will every express 
the infinite secret. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZA- 
TIONS 

THE INDEPENDENT CHURCHES 
BY REV. H. W. THOMAS, D. D. 

Philosophically considered, the Independent Church 
and the Independent State rest upon the same prin- 
ciple. 

The principle is, the divine and inherent fact and 
right of man as a free being to rule himself. The 
logical conclusion from such a premise can be nothing 
less than the rights of the people in both government 
and religion. The practical outworking, or realiza- 
tion of the principle, is republicanism in State and 
Church. 

Opposed to the rights of man as man to self-rule 
is the old and long-contended-for assumption of roy- 
alty and ecclesiasticism. The claim of these is, that 
by special and divine appointment, the kings and 
clergy have the right to rule the world; and that 
they, and they alone, by reason of this delegated 
authority, have the right to establish and govern a 
State or a Church. The logical conclusion of such a 
claim is the denial of the rights of the people, and 
the practical out-working or result is despotism in 

government and religion. 

278 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 279 

It is only natural that the State and the Church, 
royalty ecclesiasticism, kings and clergy, resting 
as they do upon the same assumption, and appealing 
to it for justification, should have journeyed side by 
side, that they should have become one in the com- 
mon desire and effort to make this assumed authority 
effective. And it is just as natural that this despotic 
assumption has been met and opposed by the larger 
claim of the rights of man in government, and rights 
of the individual reason and conscience in religion. 

In weighing these opposing claims it should be ex- 
plicitly discriminated and affirmed, that by the right 
to self rule it is not meant that man is, or by any pos- 
sibility can be, free from responsibility to God; nor 
that he has, or can have, any rights to establish a 
Church or a State contrary to the eternal principles of 
truth and justice. 

Both parties in State and Church, the democratic 
and the despotic claim like their dependence upon a 
higher source and authority than themselves, and 
that all authority is from God. The difference, the 
contention, is this: royalty and ecclesiasticism as- 
sume that the right, the authority to rule, has been 
specifically limited by divine appointment to kings 
and the clergy; over against this is the broader and 
deeper claim of the democracy of government and re- 
ligion, that the divine right to rule in State and 
Church is given to man; that it is the right of man as 
man. It is the claim of the many against the few, of 
the masses against the classes; it is the claim of hu- 
manity. 

Such a broad claim rests upon the fact that man 



28o THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

is in the image of God; is, in kind, like God; that 
reason and right and love and liberty in man are in 
kind like the same principles and powers in God, but 
less in degree; and hence the rights of all must be 
confessed. And if this claim be not justified in the 
final appeal to the nature and rights of man, then the 
American revolution was treason, not against the 
government of England, but treason against God; and 
the Reformation of the sixteenth century was treason 
against the only church of God. 

If the principle of the rights of man, upon which 
the issue turns, be admitted, then the churches 
founded by Luther, Calvin, George Fox and John 
Wesley, have the same rights as the Episcopal or 
the Catholic Churches, and, this conceded, the Con- 
gregational, the Unitarian and Universalist and Inde- 
pendent Churches cannot be excluded; and in a coun- 
try where all stand upon the same footing before the 
law, the Independent Churches have the same civil 
rights that others have. 

But the differentiating pinciples are fundamental; in 
ecclesiasticism the clergy alone can create a church, 
a ministry, formulate its creed and liturgy, and the 
property is owned by the church; in Congregationalism 
the people create the church, choose and ordain the 
pastors, determine the creeds and the forms of wor- 
ship, and the people own the property. The ministry 
of the one is hierarchical; in the other it is fraternaL 

The Independent Churches are the logical and latest 
result of the outworking of this underlying principle 
of the rights of man, the rights of reason and con- 
science in religion. First comes the three great di- 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 28l 

visions of the Reformation — the German, the English, 
and the French; then those who dissented from the 
forms of the established church; then the doctrinal 
dissensions, and separations because of differences in 
belief. For it should be remembered that, upon the 
pivotal points of orthodoxy the orthodox Protestants 
and the Catholics have always been substantially at 
one; but the Unitarian and Universalist Churches had 
their origin in a radical departure from the creed thus 
held in common; the one affirming that God is so one 
that he cannot be three; and the other affirming that 
existence would ultimately prove a blessing and not a 
curse to all souls. 

As a result of all these debates and divisions there 
have arisen many denominations, each emphasizing 
its special form of belief, or worship, or church polity. 
Those who believe in the three fundamentals of ortho- 
doxy — original sin, substitutional atonement and end- 
less punishment — assume that they are orthodox, that 
they alone have the straight or right belief; those who 
cannot accept these dogmas are called Liberals, and 
denominationally are the Unitarians and Universa- 
lists, and the liberal wing of the Congregational 
Church. 

As a matter of fact more than half the people in 
our country are outside of all the churches; and, as 
each denomination has inherited the debates and 
peculiarities of its origin, to become a member of 
any one of these, one has in a sense to assume these 
inheritances and to become in so far a specialist in be- 
lief, and hence be separated from all others. If or- 
thodox, one is a Baptist, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, 



282 THE WORLD'S. CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

a Congregationalist; if Liberal, one is a Unitarian, a 
Universalist. 

There are those of larger faith and feelings who do 
not care to be thus specialized or pushed out on any 
one point of doctrine, or to be tagged or badged as 
belonging to any sect. They prefer the unbounded 
field of truth, and the unlimited life of love. They 
are satisfied' with nothing less than the universal; and 
hence have arisen the Independent Churches, founded 
in the love of all that is true and good; fellowshiping 
in spirit all who will fellowship with them, and working 
with all who will work with them in the love of God 
and man for the universal good. 

All these Independent Churches are Congregational 
in form; and, so far as I know, all belong to the new 
or progressive school of theology. Judged by the Tri- 
Theism of eighty years ago, few, if any, could be 
called Trinitarians; a few perhaps, may hold to con- 
ditional immortality, or the destruction of the wicked; 
but not one believes in endless punishment. Resting 
upon the fundamental doctrine of the rights of man, 
— because of what he is as being in the image of 
God, in essence like God — they all believe in a present 
and continuous inspiration and revelation; in the 
progressive tendency and ultimate triumph of the 
good. 

Why then, it may be asked, do not these Inde- 
pendent Churches join the Unitarians or the Univer- 
salists? It is not that they have anything against 
them ; they love them and find much fellowship with 
them; but they are working and hoping and praying 
for something larger. Why do they not form a new 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 283 

denomination, a "Peoples" or a "Non-Sectarian" 
Church? They think there are, to say the least, full 
enough denominations already. The tendency of 
our better time is to uniting, and the hope is that 
those who hold the larger faith and hope will grow 
to be one, and that there shall thus arise a great 
American Church, large as the love of God and the 
needs of man; a church large enough to hold the grow- 
ing beliefs of a world; a church that can welcome all 
minds and hearts in the great law and life of love, and 
the work and joy of doing good. 

The objection is urged against the Independent 
Churches, that they have no elaborate or well-defined 
creed; that they "do not know what they believe." It 
is true that the present religious beliefs of the the- 
ologians are in a formative state, and that no one has 
been so unwise as try to cast them into an unyield- 
ing mould. And it is also true that the churches, 
that had long ago finished their creeds and put them 
away as perfect, are finding that they do not express 
the real faith of their own preachers, and much less 
the faith of the people. 

It is an unwritten part of the Liberal creed that 
truth is larger than the mind of man; and that whilst 
we know, we know in part only, and hence desire to 
"grow in grace and in the knowledge of the truth;" and 
we expect that "when that which is perfect is come, 
that which is in part shall be done away;" and hence 
we are not surprised to see the foundation slipping 
from under the old orthodox, and are glad that the liv- 
ing minds of that school are "putting away childish 
things." 



284 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

It is said that the Independent Churches are weak 
for want of denominational organization; and this 
may be so; and yet there is an element of strength 
in the fact of independency — in the feeling that they 
must care for their own welfare, and there is the hope 
that the friendly interest that naturally exists between 
these churches may grow into some form of closer and 
more hopeful relations. 

The Independent Churches have all come within a 
few years, not from any conceited effort but because 
of the public demand. The people everywhere are 
asking for larger and freer religious homes, and such 
churches are springing up in the different towns and 
cities all over the country; they are worshiping in 
Opera Houses, Halls and Theatres, and blotting out 
the usual line between the secular and the sacred; 
the old ideas of sanctified brick and mortar is passing 
away. Were there men put into the field, and a 
working organization, thousands and millions in our 
land who have no church home, would gladly hear 
the words of truth and life. 



THE ETHICAL SOCIETY: WHAT IS RELIG- 
ION? 

BY M. M. MANGASARIAN 

Religions die; religion lives. The Greeko-Roman, 
Germanic and Scandinavian mythologies, the Semetic 
Polytheisms of Nineveh, Babylon, Tyre and Carthage, 
the rich Pantheon of ancient Egypt, the solar wor- 
ship of the Incas, have completely passed away ; their 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 285 

temples are deserted, and their shrines are covered 
with weeds. Some predict that to this funeral list 
will be added in the near future the religions which 
still hold their sway. But it is the form and phase, the 
dogmata of religion, which come and go; the religious 
spirit abides. The bubbles on the river's surface 
disappear, but the river that gives rise to them flows 
on forever. Religions appear and perish, but the 
sentiment that creates them is eternal. 

There comes a day when one's religion ceases to 
be a mere belief in doctrine, the practice of an elab- 
orate ritual, the observance of conventional and tra- 
ditional forms, or an unquestioning acquiescence of 
authority. But the loss of these may be a decided 
gain to one's religion. From very love of religion 
one may refuse to identify himself with the popular 
creeds. A' thousand years before the birth of the 
Christian era, Epicurus had said, "That man is not 
an atheist who denies the gods of the multitude, but 
much rather he who subscribes to the opinions of the 
multitude concerning the gods." 

Religion is a word which has provoked abundant 
criticism, both friendly and hostile. The conserva- 
tives hesitate to identify religion with "mere moral- 
ity." The definition of "pure religion" given by Saint 
James, the first bishop of Jerusalem, and an apostle 
of Jesus, while it harmonizes with the Ethical view 
of religion, is in open conflict with the theological. 
Says the apostle, "Pure religion and undefiled before 
God, the Father, is this: to visit the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, and to keep one's self un- 
spotted from the world." Luther did not hesitate to 



286 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

call the epistle of James "an epistle of straw." This 
definition of religion is rejected, because it makes 
"mere morality" the sovereign element in religion. 

Religion is a living sympathy with charity and 
purity. It means the conscious fidelity to the high- 
est goodness and truth we know, a fidelity which be- 
comes an aspiration, and an aspiration which makes 
for continuous progress. The task of religion is to 
light up for us the whole moral world, to unfold to 
us the nature of moral excellence, freed from the 
integuments with which superstition has enveloped it. 
The task of religion is to weave the commonest things 
of the common day into the seamless robe of right- 
eousness. 

If my interpretation of an Ethical Religion be cor- 
rect, its mission is one of reconciliation. Theology 
promotes strife. Ethics inspires unity. Dogma has 
broken up humanity into sects and schisms. In the 
religion of morality, all the divisions and discords of 
race and creed disappear, and the united humanity, 
now in fragments, flows in peace and harmony. An 
Ethical Religion is a cohesive moral force because of 
its universality. It is neither Pagan nor Christian. 
"In morality" there is neither Jew or Gentile, bar- 
barian or Sythian, bond or free ; the whole world is 
one in the love and the reverence of the good. There 
is the transient and the eternal in religion. The one 
is represented by theology, forever shifting; the other, 
by the moral life, forever progressing. The one 
based on racial peculiarities; the other on elements 
of good, which thrive in the open atmosphere of the 
common life of mankind. If the Ethical movement 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 287 

were merely another "ism," many of us would have 
nothing to do with it. It has not come to antago- 
nize the churches, to stand aloof and throw stones at 
the institutions of the day; but to add to the moral 
convictions of the age; to increase the enthusiasm of 
mankind for the right and the good; to dash the fet- 
ters from our limbs and the scales from our eyes; and 
to give our faith and hope wings to soar to higher 
heights of achievement. All pulling down is of mal- 
ice, if it be not for the purpose of building better. 
When a man has broken away from the popular faith, 
he is at first satisfied to live on negations; mere de- 
nials suffice to keep the flame alive for some time; but 
as no fresh fuel, no affirmations, no positive thought 
and faith are added, the fire is bound to burn low and 
finally to go out, like volcanic craters which once 
emitted a bright flame, but are now cold and without 
light. The mission of the radical teacher is not only 
to lead us out of Egypt and the thraldom of Pharaoh's 
rule, but to part the Red Sea, and carry us through 
the desert of doubt and darkness into a better land, 
the land of freedom and light. 

Nor is the Ethical movement a mere annex to the 
church. Nay, it is a new church; the church of con- 
science, as opposed to the church of creed; the 
church of holy action, as opposed to the church of 
speculation; the Church of the Spirit, founded on the 
Ethical basis of Jesus and the apostle James, and all 
the Hebrew, Hindoo and Greek prophets of righteous 
ness; inviting to her communion the truth-loving peo- 
ple of the whole world: Epictetus, Socrates, Anto- 
ninus, and Spinoza, as well as Paul, Augustine and 
Bernard. 



288 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

If to thousands the church has ceased to be edify- 
ing, it is because its major key note is still theological, 
not ethical. When earnest minds turn to the church 
for inspiration, for a lift of the spirit, they are con- 
fronted with a "set of doctrines," out of touch at 
every point with science and progress, and what is 
more, with the moral nature of man, to which they 
must at least appear to give their assent. Yet this 
demoralizing atmophere of dissimulation is but one of 
the causes which is hastening the disintegration of the 
church. Another cause is the unending quarrel and 
babel of theological controversy. The fear of heresy, 
and the antagonism to original thought keep the the- 
ological world in constant tumult. It is no wonder 
that people grow weary of this perpetual wrangle of 
the contestants, tossing on their spears now this, and 
now that dogma of the church. The beautiful flower 
of virtue finds neither freedom nor sympathy to grow 
and extend its healing branches. Another cause, is 
the narrowness of the theological fellowship; it claims 
the exclusive monopoly of truth; it thinks that the 
water of life flows only through its own pipes; other 
bibles are spurious; other gods are idols; other proph- 
ets are impostors. What would we think of a man 
who thought he could empty the ocean into his thim- 
ble, or hold the universe on the point of a pin! It 
is more pitiable to think that the "thirty-nine ar- 
ticles," or the Westminster Catechism, has sounded 
the whole gamut of truth; that any one -teacher 
could comprehend all and say all; and that in any 
one book is reflected the infinite firmament of light 
and thought. It is this illiberality which has es- 




M. M. MANGASARIAN, 



born in 1859. lecturer of the Society of Ethical Culture of Chicago ; graduate 

of Roberts' College and of the theological course of 

Princeton University. 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 289 

tranged from the church some of the best men and 
women. Another cause is the cowardice of the es- 
tablished religious institutions to grapple with the 
problems of the hour. The pulpit is devoted to doc- 
trine; the people are asking for religion. We live 
in a practical age. Questions of right and wrong, of 
poverty and crime; the industrial problems, the eco- 
nomic conditions, are uppermost in our day. In the 
light of the momentous questions of every day life — 
questions of capital and labor, education and govern- 
ment, liberty and law, philanthropy and justice — the 
puzzling queries of theology appear barren. We 
want a religion that shall throw light upon the mean- 
ing of life, that shall clothe the will with power to do 
right. 

Men are breaking the traditions of the past, and 
are building for themselves a new church, the Church 
of the Moral Life. 

What and where is this moral church? The true 
church is not the place enclosed by walls, and roofed 
by a dome; not where a man appears in a long gown; 
not where solemn hymns and "te deums" are chanted; 
but where truth and justice are exalted; where man 
proves loyal to conscience; where he lays down his 
life for humanity. The true church is where sincerity 
maintains its foothold amid the hypocrisy of the world ; 
where beautiful simplicity resists the enervating 
shows and luxuries of the world; where purity of 
heart and chastity of act shine with undiminished 
lustre in the midst of moral uncleanness and licen- 
tiousness; where independence of spirit refuses to 
cringe and flatter; where temperance, and truthful- 
congress of Religions 19 



29O THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ness, and fidelity, and sacrifice, and love, win the 
battle over intemperance, knavery, falsehood, selfish- 
ness and hatred. The true church was not where 
John Calvin, in a black gown, rose to read from the 
sacred scriptures, and with clasped hands and closed 
eyes, said, "Lord, Lord;" but where Servitus, aged, 
bent with suffering, stood in the midst of the # flames 
kindled by Calivinism, and died a martyr. The true 
church was not where the Southern and Northern 
divines quoted Abraham, and Moses, and Paul, to 
prove human slavery; but where John Brown shed 
his blood for human liberty. Not where, the morn- 
ing after Saint Bartholomew's massacre, the bells 
chimed, and priests poured forth their praise and 
prayer; but in the blood-stained streets of Paris> 
where thousands preferred death to a faithless and 
cowardly compromise. 

Where is the true church? Not in the Amster- 
dam Synagogue, where in the presence of the sacred 
Law, the Rabbis anathematized with awful curses, 
one of the sweetest and saintliest of men; but in the 
small, dingy attic where Benedict Spinoza leaning 
over a table was grinding optical glasses for his daily 
living, rather than accept the gold offered to him by 
orthodox Jews and princes, as a price for his con- 
science. 

Where is the true church? Not where the con- 
secrated bishop stands, "his ears stuffed with cotton 
so that he would not hear the sighs of the bondmen;" 
but where the Salvation Army lassie descends the 
stairs of sin to soothe and succor the children of mis- 
ery, unmindful of the sneer and jeer of the rabble, 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 2gi 

gnashing on her with their teeth. Talk to her about 
sacrifice, she answers, "It is not sacrifice, it is joy." 
"You will kill yourself in these damp gutters." She 
answers, "Some one must be killed before the vic- 
tory's is won." 

It is within the reach of us all to make our lives 
religious in this high and broad sense. Unto few it 
is given to shine, but unto all it is given to be and 
to do. I rejoice to think that there are many men 
and women who quietly and sweetly go about in the 
spirit of pure religion, winning battles, saving the 
lost, smoothing the pillow of suffering, wiping the 
tear from the eyelid of sorrow, co-operating with 
justice and humanity, sympathizing with the weak 
in their struggle against the strong, with the op- 
pressed against the oppressor, with the fatherless and 
the widow against the robbers of humanity, "whose 
path in life is wet with orphan's tears," and with 
their "mild effulgence urge man's search to vaster is- 
sues." If we had eyes to see, we could read their 
names written in star type over our heads. 

If we had more of this spirit, more of the sermon 
on the mount, and the ethical beatitudes, and less 
"stained windows and high priced exclusiveness and 
cathedral habits and perspectives borrowed from 
abroad," less ecclesiasticism and theology, which 
often sap the very sources of spiritual life, there would 
be more of "pure religion" in society. A moral famine 
is upon the people because the salt has lost its savor. 

What does an Ethical religion teach concerning 
God and immortality? It would not be true to say 
that these world problems, which have occupied the 



292 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

brain and breast of humanity from time immemorial, 
do not interest us. Questions of God and immortality 
are not purely theological or philosophical. God 
and the "dread mystic ought" are ethically of the 
same nature. To the woman of Samaria Jesus said, 
"God is spirit," the spirit of goodness, of love, of truth 
and justice, "and they that worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and truth." I am carried away by 
the beauty and breadth of these words. Here is a 
conception which identifies God "with science, with 
beauty, and with joy." It would be a waste ol 
moral energy to endeavor to clothe any other word 
in the human vocabulary with the ethical power 
which has grown about this word God. To the 
scientist, the philosopher, the poet, the word God is 
indispensable. There is no reason why the Ethical 
preacher should not make the same moral use of ihis 
great word; it is the word that has made all the ages, 
in all lands, to look up. In the same way the 
thought of immortality as a horizon cannot be shut 
out from this platform. Immortality is the consum- 
mate flower of morality. To love the good and to 
live the true with enthusiasm is to hope for eternal 
life. The purest and highest love, whether it be of 
child, of mother, of friend, or of a cause, looks be- 
yond the grave. What is the destiny of man ? What 
are we here for? Surrounded by impenetrable mys- 
teries, unable to understand, yet longing to grasp the 
secret of life and death, we put forth trembling 
hands, and with stammering lips, ask, Whence? 
Whither? The grandest answer to these universal 
cravings of the spirit is found in the words God and 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 293 

Immortality. The answer is open to philosophical 
and scientific objections; it does not do away with 
all doubt, notwithstanding it is the largest and best 
answer that has been given. The Ethical Society, if 
my judgment be correct, is more in sympathy with 
the theistic than with the atheistic philosophy. I 
hold that the world moves according to some mora 
plan, and that "what is excellent is permanent," as 
Emerson puts it. Of the origin of things, of the 
primordial atom, of the First Cause, Darwin and 
Saint Paul can tell us no more than the barbarian. 
There we must introduce metaphysics. God and 
immortality, whatever their scientific merit, have 
been of incalculable service to morality; the thought 
of God and immortality has been the inspiration of 
legions of heroic men and women, who, by their liv- 
ing have elevated the standards of ethical excellence 
We cannot say that atheism in itself has been a moral 
power; there have been atheists, however, who lived 
brave and pure lives. But weighing the two ideas, 
we, who are interested in everything "that makes 
for righteousness," gladly acknowledge the superior 
worth of the theistic philosophy. To preach with 
power the love of the absolute good, the pursuit of 
the eternal ideal of perfection, I must have a back- 
ground of infinity. I must have absolute time 
wherein to realize the absolute good ; I must feel in 
my pulse the infinite, the eternal, in order to speak 
with power of even the commonest things of life. 
The theory of annihilation is too ragged and wretched 
to satisfy the quenchless aspiration of man; to hope 
for the best and the highest is one of the unmistak- 



294 THE world's congress of religions 

able evidences of a truly moral life. Enthusiasm for 
morality changes the perspective of human destiny. 
I pity the head and heart of the man who does not 
care whether the world is rushing toward the edge 
of a frightful precipice to be plunged into eternal 
darkness, or whether, supported and directed by the 
thought and love of mankind, it is swinging toward 
the heights of eternal beauty and light. 

But God and immortality are not dogmas with us. 
It is the function of an Ethical Society above all and 
over all, to deepen and broaden the moral life, to 
vivify the soul and summon it to sit in judgment over 
the daily actions of our life. The chief concern of 
this platform, which I will now endeavor to show, 
is to teach a pure religion, the two cardinal tenets of 
which are charity and purity. 

The fundamental reform, therefore, for which the 
Ethical religion stands, is not theological or philo- 
sophical. The doctrine that there is something bet- 
ter than goodness, something of more worth to the 
individual and to the community than righteousness, 
is the basic principle of orthodox religion. 

Wipe out entirely the idea that a man can be 
saved by dogma, and in its place preach the eternal 
truth that a man is saved by his character. This re- 
form, however, will not come through the theolo- 
gians; they are too much interested in their "isms;" 
it will not come through the scientists; they are too 
much absorbed with phenomena, and often take facts 
for truth. The clergy have confounded religion with 
opinion. Let the enlightened laity make of religion 
the principle of unity, cementing and combining all 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 2g5 

the powers of humanity for moral action. Only a 
few months ago in France, M. Desjardin organized 
a society under the name of "L' Union pour L' Action 
Morale." It is the declared purpose of this Society 
to push to the front the things which unite men, and 
keep in the background the things which inspire an- 
tagonism and division. Not controversy, but action, 
is its aim. This is the principle of the Ethical move- 
ment; to build a platform on which all men and 
women, all thinkers and toilers, whatever their theo- 
logical or philosophical creed, may stand hand in 
hand and co-operate for the enthronement of Truth 
and Right. 

An Ethical religion is just what its name implies. 
To all who feel that there is a real contradiction be- 
tween their deepest convictions and the "standards" 
of the religious communion to which they belong; to 
all who believe that it is morally hurtful to profess 
one thing and to hold to another, or even indirectly 
to permit others to think that they profess and be- 
lieve that which in reality they do not; to all who 
regard it a matter of conscience to seek a fellowship 
wherein they may cultivate the highest moral and 
spiritual interests, without giving even so much as a 
nominal assent to any dogmas; in one word, to all 
who hold that the Ethical element is the heart of re- 
ligion, this Society offers a home. 

It is a glorious privilege to be a member of a move- 
ment fraught with such prophetic possibilities. They 
who have been touched by its spirit cannot remain 
indifferent. Indifference is born of ignorance. It 
is not possible to know the truth and not to love it 



296 the world's congress of religions 

and to love it and not to live it. To be a genuine 
member of an Ethical fellowship is to be a missionary. 
To you who have lost all intellectual sympathy with 
the popular creeds, the Ethical fellowship is a posi- 
tive help. You cannot do without this inspiration. 
This is the moral sieve which shall shake the gold of 
the past and the present into your and your children's 
lap. The living voice of the teacher calling you 
away from the influence of che earth to visions of the 
ideal, is an indispensable factor in your mental and 
spiritual progress. It does more than can ' be esti- 
mated in figures to keep alive the moral flame in the 
breast of mankind. 

Oh ! how I wish all liberal thinkers who have 
drifted from the beaten tracks, and who are strong 
enough to break the ball and chain around the ankle, 
and move with freer step, would come and put their 
heart in this cause. Radicalism needs a new birth. 
It has been living too long on husks. The man who 
shall succeed in organizing the radical forces, and in- 
spire them with enthusiasm and the missionary spirit, 
will reap a magnificent harvest. 

If it be a glorious privilege to belong to such a free 
and progressive fellowship, how much more respon- 
sible to be one of its teachers! The mental and 
moral qualifications of an Ethical teacher should be 
of the highest nature. There is no vocation in life 
more sacred. To be able to open men's eyes to the 
high meaning of life; to dispel doubt and fear, and 
convert hesitation and indifference into hope and en- 
thusiasm; to be able to support the weak from *all- 
ing, and to lift the fallen from the ground; to be able 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 297 

to lead and nurture with truth and goodness with free- 
dom and light, hundreds, and through these hun- 
dreds, thousands; to be able to mould and shape 
character into strength and beauty; aye, to have 
power over the will, and change it and direct it — 
what is there comparable in utility and sublimity to 
the task of the teacher. It is in order to procure the 
largest results that we say to one man, let your whole 
time and energies be devoted to study, keep abreast of 
the best thought of the day, learn from the leading 
scientists, philosophers, and scholars of the age, and 
walk hand in hand with the philanthropists, reform- 
ers and the toilers for humanity. In your Sunday 
discourse give us the music and poetry of all the 
spiritual heavens. Read to us the lessons of life, not 
from parchment or ancient document or dust-worn 
book, but from the depths of your own soul. Culti- 
vate your knowledge of human nature, understand 
the "keys and stops" of our humanity, preach to us 
about the duty "the simple but eternal ought." Do 
not mind our feelings but speak thou to the best 
within us; stir up the noble longings of our souls; 
fan into blaze the sparks of love in our bosom; chas- 
tise us for our vices; "shame us for our wrong-doings, 
the jealousies, envies, deceits, and frauds of our con- 
duct," and be to us the Bread of Life* In doubt and 
darkness show us the light ; in trouble be to us a 
faithful friend; in sorrow and suffering let us lean 
upon thine arm and draw from thy heart; in death 
let us have the joy and solace of thy presence, and 
let your high ideas tint our horizon with hope. 

The Ethical Society, in order to be worthy of the 



298 the world's congress of religions 

high hopes of its supporters, must engage in the com- 
bat against intemperance, which, like a vampire, dev- 
astates the fields which we cultivate and sow with 
good seed; against all dishonesty in business; against 
oppression of the weak by the strong in all its multi- 
tudinous forms; against the spirit of gambling; against 
the social evil and the impurity of private conduct 
against the prostitution of public office into private 
profit; against injustice in all the relations of life; 
against the grabbing, grasping demon of monopoly; 
against the enervating luxuries, the love of display in 
dress and ornaments, the selfish gratification of the 
appetites, the indifference to all high ideals, and the 
hypocrisy that is satisfied with mere appearances, in 
one word, against all the organized, established, liv- 
ing sins of the people. With a firm but kindly hand, 
let us expose the wounds and sores of our modern 
society. It is not denunciation, not intemperate 
effusions of wrath, but careful study of the nature and 
causes of the diseases that will help us to suggest and 
propose hopeful remedies. Let us become mission- 
aries, filling the wilderness with the echo of our voice, 
"Repent ye, for the New Day is at hand." 

Let us re-consecrate ourselves this morning in the 
spirit of freedom and unity. A new age is upon us. 

The fields are white with the harvest, and from the 
ends of the earth men call us to deliver their land 
from error's chain. We are stewards of the new and 
betcer thought, but our stewardship will be taken 
away from us, and we shall lose our place as pioneers 
and prophets of the faith that maketh free, if we 
prove faithless to our high calling. Organize, there- 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 299 

fore under the banner of truth and march forward to 
give the world a religion that shall be without intol- 
erance, wherein not reasoning but reason shall take 
the place of blind faith, wherein not moralism but 
morality the hunger and thirst for righteousness shall 
take the place of dogma. 

STATEMENT CONCERNING THE ETHICAL 
SOCIETY. 

The general aim of the Ethical movement is to 
cultivate a living sympathy with goodness and truth; 
to teach "pure religion" which is the conscious fi- 
delity to the highest goodness and purity we know; a 
fidelity which becomes an aspiration, an aspiration 
which makes for progress in the moral life. 

We recognize the truth that the well-being of the 
State in which our interests are so vitally concerned, 
must consist in the well doing of its individual mem- 
bers. Therefore we deem it to be our highest duty so 
to cultivate our facilities and order our lives that we 
may instruct others in every good way, both by ex- 
ample and precept, and thus, while securing our own 
happiness, render the highest and best service possi- 
ble to the State and to our fellow-man. 

We consider just and rational views of our own re- 
lation to the Universe in which we are placed to be 
obviously essential to the proper comprehension of 
our duty. Where the mental vision is clouded with 
mists of superstition, no clear conceptions of duty are 
attainable. Speculative philosophy and dogmatic the- 
ology, therefore, should be tested by the teachings of 
science, reason and conscience, and stand or fall by 
them. 

The forms of dogmatic belief currently taught have 
ceased to command our intellectual assent or sa f isfy 
our moral needs. They obstruct the development both 
of mind and heart. To find a truer philosophy of life 



300 THE WORLDS CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

and a larger ideal of duty is one of the tasks we set 
before us. 

As there are general laws governing physical life 
upon our obedience to which our physical health is 
dependent, so there are laws as yet but imperfectly 
understood, underlying our moral and intellectual life, 
on which our moral and intellectual well-being de- 
pends. The study of these laws is of the highest im- 
portance, both for the well-ordering of our own lives 
and for enabling us to give others, especially our chil- 
dren, all possible aid in shaping their lives to noble 
ends. 

Having constantly before us the spectacle of debase- 
ment and misery resulting from the violation of these 
laws, often through ignorance, and realizing how inad- 
equate the methods heretofore employed to cure these 
evils have been, as shown by the results, we feel that 
a sacred duty rests upon us, while we seek to correct 
our own lives in whatever may be amiss, to do all 
within our power to raise our less fortunate fellowmen 
out of the sorrowful conditions into which they have 
fallen. 

No subscription or assent to any formula of faith, 
belief or creed shall be required as a qualification for 
membership, but members in joining shall be under- 
stood to give general assent to the statement of princi- 
ples adopted by this society, and to express a purpose 
to lead an upright life. 

The first lecturer and the author of the Ethical 
Movement was Prof. Felix Adler of New York. The 
society was formed in New York City in 1876, and in 
Chicago in 1883. 

Mr. Mangasarian became lecturer for the Chicago 
society in February, 1892. In 1887 the "Union of the 
Societies for Ethical Culture" was formed. The 
Constitution of the Union declares that the aim of the 
Ethical Movement is to elevate the moral life of its 
members and that of the community. There are strong 
societies in all the large cities of the United States 
and Europe. They maintain Sunday schools for eth- 
ical education and otherwise maintain their association 
and societies on the general plan of the churches, each 



INDEPENDENT AND ETHICAL ORGANIZATIONS 3OI 

leciurer being responsible for his views only to his 
society. A regular text book of ethics is used in the 
Sunday school with special references to ?11 great lit- 
erature as the Bible, Virgil, Dante, Homer, Milton 
ana Shakespeare. 



CHAPTER XIX 

ULTIMATE RELIGION 

Dr. Hugenholtz spoke as follows: 

Amid those who have prepared the way for this par- 
liament I may point with pride at this Holland Con- 
federation of Protestants, whose single aim, according 
to its constitution, is and already has been for more 
than twenty years to promote the free development 
"o : the religious life within the churches and beyond," 
without any other dogmatic or denominational addi- 
tion. Our Protestanten bond, therefore, must hail with 
enthusiasm this fullness of the times. Its delegate 
must feel at home amid these thousands, all of them 
members of the same confederation, all of them, or 
nearly all of them, promoters of the free development 
of the religious life. 

And now, how shall this aim be reached? What 
will, what must be the result of the parliament? I 
trust it will be this, that henceforth there shall be 
put a stop to the mutual rivalry of the various relig- 
ions in order to show that our religion, if not the only 
good and true one, still must be considered as the 
best of all. Religion is in such a way influenced 
by climate, race, and tradition that what is the best 
for one cannot at the same degree satisfy the wants of 
another. 

No, there is better rivalry promising greater and 
surer success. Let all of us rival in this way, who 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 303 

of us can best and soonest live up to the highest de- 
mande of his leligion, who of us first can overcome 
the sad difference between creed and deed, between 
his piotessed and his applied religion? 

And whenevei we discover — as in these days we 
could many times — whenever we discover in each 
other's religion something that is lacking or less 
developed in ours, let us try to also aim that precious 
good in thus to enrich our own religion with the spir- 
itual pleasures found elsewhere. 

This indeed will be to promote the free, the un- 
prejudiced development of the religious life, by which, 
il all of us are thus advancing along our different 
lines, a* the end we will meet each other on the 
heights, when the consciousness of being near to God 
will fill all his children with everlasting joy. 

MAN ALONE BUILDS ALTARS. 

"The leading thought of to-day" remarked Dr. Bar- 
rows "is ultimate and universal religion and surely if 
any one has a right to speak of that it is a represen- 
tative of the Hebrew race Dr. Emil Hirsch of Chicago 
who calls himself, and he is, a thorough American. He 
represents a people whose contributions to the relig- 
ion of the world are certainly greater than those of 
any other nation and I have great pleasure in intro- 
ducing Dr. Hirsch to this parliament." Dr. Hirsch 
was received with loud applause and spoke in part as 
follows: 

The domain of religion is co-extensive with the con- 
fines of humanity. For man is by nature not only, as 
Aristotle puts the case, the political ; he is clearly the 
religious creature. Religion is one of the natural 



304 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

functions of the human soul; it is one of the natural 
conditions of human as distinct from mere animal life. 
To this proposition ethnology and sociology both 
give abundant and indisputable testimony. Man alone 
in the wide sweep of creation builds altars. And 
wherever man may tent there will curve upward the 
burning incense of his sacrifice or the sweeter perfume 
of his aspirations after the better, the diviner light. 
However rude the form of his social organization, or 
however refined and complex, religion will always be 
found among the decisive influences which, rounding 
out individual existence, lift it into significance for 
and under the stronger current of social relations. 
Climatic and historical accidents may modify the ac- 
tion of this energy. But it is vital under every sky 
and quick under all temporal conjunctures. A man 
without religion is not normal. 

Religion may in very truth be said to be universal 
Nevertheless time has not yet evolved the universal 
religion. This is still one of the blessings to come. 
There are religious systems which pretend to univer- 
sality. And who would deny that Buddhism, Chris- 
tianity, and Islamism present some of the character- 
istic elements of the universal faith that is to rise? 
In its ideas and ideals the religion of the prophets, 
notably those of the Babylonian exile, must also be 
credited with the larger possibilities. 

Religion universal will be a potent factor in redeem- 
ing society from the bondage of selfishness. For it is 
this religion which teaches that every man is every 
man's brother. "As you have done for the least among 
these you have done for me," will become a guiding 
principle of human conduct in all the relations of life. 
Then men will learn to appreciate the hideousness of 
Cain's plea, "Am I my brother's keeper?" No longer 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 305 

will be tolerated the double standard of morality, one 
for the church and Sunday, and another for business 
and weekdays. Not as now will be heard the cynic 
insistence that business is business, as something with 
which the Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount 
stands in no direct relation. Religion will on the 
contrary penetrate into all the relations of society. 
No longer will men be rated as so many dead hands 
to be bought at the lowest possible cost in accordance 
with the law of supply and demand that cannot stop 
to take into accoun* the humanity of the possessor of 
those hands. 

What about death and the life hereafter? The relig- 
ion universal will not dim the hope which has been 
man's since the first days of his stay on earth. But 
it will be most emphatic in winning men to the con- 
viction that a life worthily spent here on earth is the 
best preparation for meeting our maker in the next. 

The universal religion of the future will be impa- 
tient of those men who claim the right to be saved 
for some act of theirs or a faith which makes them 
anxious alone for their individual salvation while 
they do not stir a foot or lift a hand to save the rest 
of humanity from hunger and wretchedness in the 
cool assurance that this life is a free race of untram- 
meled competitors in which, by some mysterious will 
of providence, the devil takes the hindmost — whose 
creed in other words is that to get there first is the 
sum total of a truly religious life. 

The universal religion, which, in the fullness of time, 
will gather into one community all the sons of Adam, 
will not palisade its sacred precincts by the stakes of 
a creed. Will it for this be Godless? Ah, no. The 
coming man will not be ready to resign the crown of 
his glory, which is his by virtue of his feelin g himself 

Congress ox Religion 3Q 



306 THE world's congress of religions 

the son of God. He will not subscribe to the most 
dogmatic of all dogmatic statements that the world 
which sweeps around him in such sublime harmony 
and order is the fortuitous work of chance. He will 
not extinguish the light of his own higher life by 
shutting his eyes to the telling indications of purpose 
in history, a purpose which therefore he may also 
predicate into nature. But he will be modest. Can 
man by searching find out God? asks the old Hebrew 
poet. And the ages are vocal with the reply, a sting- 
ing rebuke to all creed builders, that he cannot. Man 
grows into the knowledge of God as the ages roll on. 
But never will he command that abundance of light 
which will reveal before his bleared eye the full vi- 
sion of the Godhead. The universal religion will 
teach men to find God in their own heart. Having 
found him there there will be no difficulty to find him 
in nature, whatever our scientific theories may be. 
God's face no mortal may see, but as he passes before 
our eyes we will detect his marvels and will hear his 
proclamation as did Moses of old on the lonely rock. 
We then will once more learn that God is not in the 
tempest and not in the fire, but in the still small 
voice. 

SEEKING UNITY IN HUMAN RACE. 

The Rev. Dr. William R. Alger of New York was in- 
troduced to speak on the only possible method of- 
religious unification of the human race. The distin- 
guished logician dealt with this prime object of the 
Parliament of Religions, and among other things said: 

Let us see what the unification of the human race 
would be in general. If we seek unity we must begin 
with that which offers the least resistance to unity/ 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 307 

The first form of partial unification of the human race 
is the esthetic unification. By that I mean the estab- 
lishment of a universal code of good manners, that 
all persons shall treat each other with kindness and 
justice and respect in their behavior. That is the 
beginning of the unification of the human race. There 
is self-love, which would interpose the slightest re- 
sistance, so that is the first step. 

The second step is the scientific unification of the 
human race. That has already established itself to a 
great extent. There is but ono chemistry, but one 
mathematics, one physiology, and so on with all the 
sciences, whether botany, whether geography, or 
astronomy. Science is established and unifies the hu- 
man race. Then the third partial form of unification 
after the esthetic and the scientific is the ethical. Just 
in proportion as conscience becomes purified and en- 
lightened, it sees things all alike, it interprets duty 
harmoniously. Then the fourth form of unification, 
partial form, is the political unification of the human 
race. 

Then the fifth partial form of the codification of the 
human race will be the commercial and social, the 
free circulation of all the component items of humanity 
through the whole of humanity. 

Now we come to our point. There are three unity, 
if I may so speak, unification of the whole race, for 
which seven is whole, the whole made up of six pre- 
ceding distinctions. Now the seventh is a trinity. 
Let us see what are the three. We have the philo- 
sophical unification and the theological unification, and 
the unity of those is the religious unification. 

The great obstacle to the religious unification of the 
human race is the irreligious always associated and 
often identified with the religious. There are three 



308 THE world's congress of religions 

great specifications of that. First, hatred is made a 
religion. Then, in the second place, not only do they 
have hatred but they have bigotry. Then, in the third 
place, the priesthoods, from the Pope and the Cardi- 
nals down to the humblest priest of the pettiest sects, 
are generally their leaders, their heresy hunters, and 
dictatorial leaders are all cosmic men, not divine. 
They seek power instead of service. Instead of serv- 
ing humanity, they undertake to govern humanity, and 
there is an impersonal and awful arrogance in religious 
pride, which is the worst form of pride that there is. 
We find in all these particulars that it is most en- 
couraging for us to see that what I say represents the 
great drift of our age; and in an unparalleled degree 
the meaning and drifting of this World's Parliament 
of Religions — all these tendencies are moving in the 
right direction. We only want to unify them and ac- 
celerate them. The next point is that we must put 
the preponderating emphasis, without any division, 
on the ethical aspects of religion instead of on the 
speculative. Formerly it was just the other way. We 
are rapidly coming to that. 

FOR OVERTHROW OF CREEDISM. 

The Rev. Dr. John Duke McFaden of Carleton, 
Neb., was introduced and spoke in part as follows: 

In working for the world's salvation we are to work 
for the overthrow of creedism. The religious world is 
divided because of creeds and not because of God, 
theories and opinions are made substitutes for truth. 
The substitutes are relied on and the truth is left in 
the background. The prophet's staff could not put 
new life into the dead boy — the man of God must 
touch and breathe in him, and human creeds, cannot 



Ultimate religion 309 

give life to the dying race of men — God himself must 
touch and heal and save. 

The pulpits and churches and organizations must be 
linked for the work of saving from crime and violence. 
The same writer in his vision saw united the figure 
having the face of a man, of a lion, of an eagle, and 
of an ox — united for God's work. He teaches the union 
of different forces for a great object. I believe that 
God wants the union of America, and Europe, and 
Asia, and Africa. Union for salvation. For the lift- 
ing up of humanity. For this purpose God made all 
nations of one blood, and for this purpose the Mas- 
ter prayed, and that prayer God will answer through 
all who do his will. 

In working for this wonderful object let us keep in 
view the fact that there will be held another Parlia- 
ment of Religions in that great city, the new Jerusa- 
lem, with its jasper walls and gates of pearl, its streets 
of gold and rainbow-gilded throne, its tree of life and 
river clear as crystal, its sea of glass mingled with 
fire and wonders untold. The angelic and redeemed 
hosts of heaven with those who come from the North, 
and the South, and the East, and the West shall form 
a parliament where the union shall be eternal, for 
here is the fullness of joy and pleasures forever more. 
Between that parliament and this there is a gateway. 
On the arch are the letters D — E — A— T — H. Through 
that gateway we must pass, and if we develop charac- 
ter until we reach the arch we may interpret the let- 
ters. D stands for disciple; E, enter; A, and; T, 
travel; and H, heavenward. Death, to the Christian 
means disciple enter and travel heavenward. 

WORSHIP OF GOD IN MAN. 

Elizabeth Stanton said: 

As we have not yet reached the ultimatum of relig- 



3io 

ious faith it may be legitimate to ask, What will the 
next step be? As we are all alike interested in the 
trend of religious thought no one should feel aggrieved 
in hearing his creed fairly analyzed or in listening to 
speculations as to something better in the near future. 
As 1 read the signs of the times, I think the next form 
of religion will be the "religion of humanity," in 
which men and women will worship what they see of 
the divine in each other; the virtues, the beatitudes, 
the possibilities ascribed to deity, reflected in mortal 
beings. 

The reconciliation of man to his brother is a more 
practical religion than that of man to his father and 
the process is more easily understood. The word re- 
ligion means to bind again, to unite those who have 
been separated, to harmonize those who have been in 
antagonism. Thus far the attitude of man to man 
has been hostile — ever in competition, trying to over- 
reach and enslave each other. With hope we behold 
the dawn of the new day in the general wakening to 
the needs of the laboring masses. We hail the work 
of the Salvation Army, the King's Daughters, the 
kindergarten and ragged schools for children of the 
poor, the university settlements, etc. All these, added 
to our innumerable charities, show that the trend of 
t ought is setting in the right direction for the health, 
happiness and education of the lowest classes of hu- 
manity. 

MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE. 

"As we have attended the sessions of this glorious 
parliament," said Rev. George Dana Boardman, of 
Philadelphia, who assumed the chair during the tem- 
porary absence of Dr. Barrows, "we would fain have 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 31I 

sung that effusion of the American poetess: 'Mine 
eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.' 
It will be our pleasure now to listen for ten min- 
utes to Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, author of the * Battle 
Hymn of Freedom.'" 

Mrs. Howe, who was received with loud applause 
and the Chatauqua salute, spoke as follows: 

I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but 
also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small 
voice and do some such miracle as was done when the 
loaves and fishes fed the multitude in the ancient time 
which has just been spoken of. I have been listen- 
ing to what our much honored friend (Professor Wil- 
kinson) has said, and yet, before I say anything on my 
own account, I want to take the word Christianity 
back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart 
whose pulse seems to throb through the world to-day, 
that endless fountain of charity, out of which I be- 
lieve has come all true progress and all civilization 
that deserves the name. As a woman, I do not wish 
to dwell upon any trait of exclusiveness in the latter 
which belong to a time when such exclusiveness per- 
haps could not be helped, and which may have been 
put in where it was not expressed. [Applause.] I 
go back to that great spirit which contemplated a 
sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice 
is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless 
and joyous inclusion. [Great applause.] And I thank 
God for it. 

VOYAGE INTO THOUGHT. 

I have turned my back to-day upon the great show 
in Jackson Park in order to see a greater spectacle 
here. The daring voyage of Columbus across an un- 



312 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

known sea we all remember with deep gratitude. All 
that we have done and all that we are now doing is 
not too much to do honor to the loyalty and courage 
of that one inspired man. But the voyages of so many 
valorous souls into the unknown infinite of thought, 
into the deep questions of the soul between men and 
God — oh, what a voyage is that ! O, what a sea to 
sail! And I thought, coming to this parliament of 
religions, we shall have found a port at last; after 
many wanderings we shall have come to the one great 
harbor where all the fleets can ride, where all the ban- 
ners can be displayed, and on each banner will be 
written, so bright that it will efface the herald's 
blazon, these words that Paul uttered in Athens, "to 
the unknown God; " to the God who is not unknown 
because we doubt him, not unknown because we do 
not feel that he is the life of our life, the soul of our 
soul, the light of the world in which we live and move, 
but because he, being infinite, transcends our powers, 
and all humanity, speaking from every standpoint, 
saying all it can, and all that- it knows, cannot say 
that it knows him. [Great applause.] 

HOPE FOR PRACTICAL UNION. 

I hoped and still hope that from this parliament 
something very positive in the way of agreement and 
of practical action will come forth. It has certainly 
been very edifying. My limited strength has not al- 
lowed me to attend here very much, but I know and we 
all know the drift of what has been going on here. It 
has been extremely edifying to hear of the good the- 
ories of duty and morality and piety which the various 
religions advocate. I will put them all on one basis, 
Christian and Jewish and ethnic, which they all pro- 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 313 

mulgate to mankind. But what I think we want now 
to do is to inquire why the practice of all nations, 
our own as well as any other, is so much at variance 
with these noble precepts? [Applause.] These great 
founders of religion have made the true sacrifice. 
They have taken a noble human life, full of every 
human longing and passion and power and aspiration, 
and they have taken it all to try and find out some- 
thing about this question of what God meant man to 
be and does mean him to be. But while they have 
made this great sacrifice, how is it with the multitude 
of us? Are we making any sacrifice at all? We think 
it was very well that those heroic spirits should study, 
should agonize and bleed for us. But what do we do? 
Now, it seems to me very important that from this 
parliament should go forth a fundamental agreement 
as to what is religion and as to what is not religion. 
I need not stand here to repeat any definition of what 
religion is. I think you will all say that it is aspira- 
tion, the pursuit of the divine in the human; the 
sacrifice of everything to duty for the sake of God and 
of humanity and of our own individual dignity. What 
is it that passes for religion? In some countries 
magic passes for religion, and that is one thing I wish, 
in view particularly of the ethnic faiths, could be 
made very prominent — that religion is not magic. I 
am very sure that in many countries it is supposed 
to be so. You do something that will bring you good 
luck. It is for the interests of the priesthood to cher_ 
ish that idea. Of course the idea of advantage in this 
life and in another life is very strong, and rightly very 
strong in all human breasts. Therefore, it is for the 
advantage of the priesthoods to make it to be supposed 
that they have in their possession certain tricks, cer- 
tain charms, which will give you either some partic- 



314 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ular gift or prosperity in this world or possibly the 
privilege of immortal happiness. Now, this is not relig- 
ion. This is most mischievous irreligion, and I think 
this parliament should say, once for all, that the name of 
God and the names of his saints are not things to 
conjure with. [Great applause.] 

THINGS NOT RELIGIOUS. 

Europe to-day is afflicted with a terrible scourge. 
Europe, and, I think, other continents. This scourge 
is generated by a pilgrimage which pious Mohamme- 
dans — there may be some present — are led to suppose 
is for the benefit of their souls. They go to a spot 
which tney consider sacred; they die; they perish by 
thousands; their animals perish; a terrible atmosphere 
is generated which flies all over the globe, and we do 
not know how soon this pestilence will reach us. It 
seems to me that we, at this parliament of religions, 
can ask any who represent that religion here to say 
that this pilgrimage is not religion; a pilgrimage 
which poisons whole continents and sweeps away men 
women and children by thousands has nothing to do 
with religion at all. [Great applause.] It would be 
for the benefit of the whole world if we could take that 
stand. 

Then I may say another thing. I think nothing is re- 
ligion which puts one individual absolutely above 
others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex 
above another. [Applause.] Religion is primarily 
our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for 
him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, 
who is highest and who is not; of that we know noth- 
ing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set 
of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement 



ULTIMATE RELIGION . 315 

or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing 
which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. 
Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality 
of men is no religion. 

From this parliament let some valorous, new, strong 
and courageous influence go forth, and let us have 
here an agreement of all faiths for one good end, for 
one good thing — really for the glory of God, really 
for the salvation of humanity from all that is low and 
animal and unworthy and undivine. [Great applause.] 

REV. OLYMPIA BROWN. 

HOPE OF THE RACE IN MOTHERHOOD. 

She said: 

It is a significant and encouraging sign that in this 
great parliament ol religions so much time is given to 
practical questions, such as are suggested by intem- 
perance, crime, the subordination of woman and other 
subjects of a similar character. The practical appli- 
cations of religion are to-day of more importance than 
philosophical speculation. All the religions of the 
world are here, not to wrangle over the theological 
differences or forms or modes of worship, but to join 
hands in one grand heroic effort for the uplifting of 
humanity. 

We live in an humanitarian age when religionists 
and theologians are asking, not so much, how best to 
secure an interest in the real estate of the Eternal City, 
as how they may make this earth habitable for God's 
children. Not how they may appease the wrath of an 
offended deity and purchase their own personal salva- 
tion hereafter, but how they can bless their fellowmen, 
here and now. "If ye love not your brother whom 



316 THE WORLD*S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ye have seen how can ye love God whom ye have not 
seen?" 

The cause and cure of crime is one of the most im- 
portant questions that can engage the attention of 
theologian, philanthropist or statesman. In the com- 
plex society of modern times, crimes are multiplied, 
appearing in new forms and disguised and concealed 
by the methods which our larger knowledge and many 
inventions make possible. 

TAINTS OF INHERITANCE. 

A few years ago public attention was called to a 
widely circulated pamphlet which gave a history of 
the Jukes family, which for generations had been char- 
acterized by acts of lawlessness and crime: the taint 
seemed to extend to every ramification of the family, 
the awful record showing that out of many hundreds, 
only one or two had escaped idiocy or criminality. 

The story of Margaret, the mother, of criminals, is 
familiar to all. Margaret was a poor, neglected, ig- 
norant inmate of the almshouse in one of the counties 
in New York State, her progeny were found in the 
poor-houses and jails of that region for generations. 

In a recent report of one of our great reformatories, 
the superintendent says: "The investigations and ex- 
perience of the past year have served to strengthen 
the opinion that physical degeneracy is a common 
cause of criminal conduct," which statement confirms 
the theory that in the majority of cases the criminal 
is a man badly born. So true is it that in all the 
relations of life men are dependent upon other men, 
and each one is interested to have everybody else do 
right, especially his own ancestors. 

Dipsomania is now almost universally recognized as 
an inheritance from the drinking habits of the past, 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 317 

and all the evil passions of men bear fruitage in after 
generations in various forms of crime. 

INHERITED MURDEROUS TENDENCIES. 

Recently a man escaped from one of our state pris- 
ons by killing two of his guards ; he had been charged 
with matricide and was convicted of murder com- 
mitted in the most cruel and brutal manner and with- 
out any apparent motive. The crime attracted much 
attention from the fact that he had been reared with 
great care and tenderness by wise and good parents. 
At the time of his trial it was shown that the woman 
he had killed was not, as he had supposed, his own 
mother, but that his reputed parents had adopted him 
as an infant in a distant part of the country and had 
reared and educated him as their own child. Little 
was learned concerning his parentage except that his 
father was a murderer. Thus, in spite of education 
and circumstances the inherent tendency to murder 
asserted itself and the crime of the father was repeated 
again in the son. 

This is but one instance, but it is the type of many 
that are familiar to students of this subject, all show- 
ing that the criminal is often the victim of the mis- 
takes, the evil passions, the crimes of those who went 
before. As the drinking habit results, in after genera- 
tions, in epilepsy, insanity and various forms of nerv- 
ous disease, so other evil passions reappear in differ- 
ent guises and give birth to a great variety of crimes. 
What can we do to check this great tide of criminality 
which perpetuates itself thus from generation to gen- 
eration, gathering ever new strength and force with 
time. How stop this supply of criminals? 

MEN MUST BE BETTER BORN. 

There is but one answer, men must be better born, 



318 the world's congress of religions 

and that means that they must have better mothers. 
We are learning that not only the sins of the fathers, 
but the mistakes and unfortunate conditions of the 
mothers, bear terrible fruitage, even to the third and 
fourth generation. God has intrusted the mother with 
the awful responsibility of giving the first direction to 
human character. 

In the long months which precede the birth of the 
young spirit what communion of angels may elevate 
and inspire her soul, thus giving the promise of the 
advent of a heavenly messenger who should proclaim 
peace on earth, good will to men! Or what demons 
of pride, avarice, jealousy may preside over the devel- 
opment of the new life, sending forth upon earth an 
avenger, to lift his hand against every man, to blast 
the joys of life and to weigh like an incubus upon 
society! Woman becomes thus an architect of human 
life with all its possibilities of joy or sorrow, of vir- 
tue or vice, of victory or defeat, and it was because 
of this momentous mission that she was not only giv- 
en joint dominion with man over the earth, but was 
made to be supreme in the home and in the marriage 
relation. 

Old and New Testament Scriptures alike announce 
the Divine fiat that man is to leave all things, his 
father and his mother if need be, and cleave unto his 
wife. His personal preferences, his ambitions, his 
business of the world, his early affections, all must 
be subordinate to this one great object of the marriage 
relation, the formation of noble human characters; and 
in this creative realm woman is to rule supreme, she 
must be the arbiter of the home, that in her Divine 
work of molding character she may surround herself 
with such conditions and win to herself such heavenly 
communions that her children shall indeed be heirs 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 3 10, 

of God bearing upon their foreheads the stamp of the 
Divine. 

When, in some of our marriage ceremonies, she is re- 
quired to promise implicit obedience to her lord and 
master, and in so-called Christian states she is bound 
by law to work all her lifetime for board and clothes, 
it is evident that we are not fulfilling the Scriptural 
law. No wonder the world is cursed with cowards, 
idiots and criminals, when the mothers of the race 
are in bondage. Only in an atmosphere of freedom 
can woman accomplish her grand destiny. Napoleon, 
on being asked what France most needed, replied, 
good mothers. What France, America and all lands 
need is a free motherhood. Helen Gardener well says : 
"Moral idiots, like Jesse Pomeroy and Reginald 
Berchall in life, Pecksniffs, Becky Sharps and Fred 
Harmons in fiction, will continue to cumber the earth 
as long as conditions continue to breed them." The 
race is stamped by its mothers, the fountain will not 
rise higher than its source, men will be no better than 
the mothers that bear them, and as woman is elevated, 
her mental vision enlarged and her true dignity estab- 
lished, will her sons go forth armed with a native 
power to uphold the right, trample out iniquity and 
overcome the world. 

BATTLE FOR THE RACE. 

The battle for womanhood is the battle for the race; 
upon her dignity of character and position depends the 
future of humanity. We shall have taken the first and 
all-important step in doing away with crime and less- 
ening the number of criminals when we have emanci- 
pated motherhood. The emancipation of women means 
society redeemed and humanity saved. With the ele- 
vation of women education will become more effective, 



320 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Not only will children be better born, but there will 
be higher ideals, new incentives, and the whole scope 
of education and reform will be enlarged. 

The Universalist Church, which I have the honor to 
represent, stands for the humanitarian element in re- 
ligion. It recognizes the fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man. We believe in a God who has 
made all things good and beautiful in their time and 
whose supreme and beneficent law will work out the 
final victory of the good. We believe that even the 
poorest, most ill-born, most misdirected human being 
possesses capabilities of goodness which are in their 
nature divine and indestructible, and which must at 
last enable him, by God's grace, to rise above weak- 
ness and folly and sin, and to share in the inheritance 
of eternal life. We believe that love is the potent 
influence which shall at last win all souls to holinesss 
and to God; love, exemplified and made effective 
through the life, the labors, the teachings, the death 
and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who came to be a 
propitiation for the sins of the whole world. 

REFORMATION OF THE ERRING. 

And, so believing, our church stands for those humane 
methods of dealing with the criminal, which, while 
protecting society, shall at the same time seek the 
reformation of the erring one. 

Regarding human life as too sacred a gift to be 
placed in the hands of human courts, we oppose cap- 
ital punishment and we make unceasing war upon such 
kinds of prison discipline as tend to harden and bru- 
talize the criminal. 

But while so few people believe in the possible sal- 
vation of the erring, while the spirit of true Christian 
love is still so rare and its intelligent application to 



ULTIMATE RELIGION 321 

the work of the world so little sought, how can offi- 
cers be found to fitly manage such institutions and 
conduct them in the interest of the highest humanity? 
While our legislatures are still so much imbued by 
the material and utilitarian spirit of previous ages of 
selfishness, how secure such laws as shall represent 
the philanthropy and the sympathy of a truly Christian 
people? We need, in dealing with these humanitarian 
questions, the mother's sympathy with her little ones. 
Mothers, who alone know at what great cost a human 
life has been given to the world, should help to make 
the laws which affect the condition and decide the 
earthly destiny of their children. 

ONLY EFFECTIVE REMEDY FOR CRIME. 

Our legislators have been so much occupied with 
questions of tariff and taxes, of silver and coinage and 
other pecuniary interests that they have, in a measure 
neglected the higher objects of legislation, namely, 
the development of a redeemed and perfected human- 
ity. When the mothers sit in council those subjects 
which affect the improvement of society, the protection 
of the weak, the reformation of the wicked, the edu- 
cation of the youth, the elimination of the unfortunate 
and dangerous classes, will be made prominent. 

As in the sick room it is the mother's tender touch 
that soothes the child's pain and calls back the glow 
of health, so in this sin-sick world it must be the 
loving sympathy of mothers that shall win back the 
erring and restore them to mental health and moral 
beauty. It is the glory of Christianity that it has 
recognized and enthroned womanood. 

The great master first revealed himself as the Mes- 
siah to a woman. He wrought his first miracle at the 
command of a woman, and as a recognition of the su- 

Congress of Religions 21 



322 THE WORLDS CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

premacy of motherhood; he revealed the great truths 
that he came to bring to women, and he sent woman 
forth to proclaim the risen Lord, and so to-day he com- 
mands women to go abroad publishing the Gospel of 
a world's salvation. And shall men, churches or gov- 
ernments dare longer to prohibit women from obeying 
the command and fulfilling the Divine decree? All 
reforms wait for woman's freedom. The only effectual 
remedy for crime is the enlightenment, independence 
and freedom of motherhood. 



CHAPTER XX 
LAST WORDS 

PARTING OF THE WAYS: PARLIAMENT OF RELIGION AT 
AN END. WITH SCENES OF FELLOWSHIP UNPRECE- 
DENTED IN HISTORY THE BRETHREN SAY FAREWELL 
UNDER A BENEDICTION OF PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD 
WILL TO MEN. 

"Peace on earth and good will toward men!" 
With these sublime words, pronounced by nearly 
5,000 voices, the wonderful parliament of religions 
dissolved. It was a noble and inspiring scene, that 
which marked the dispersing of the creeds in the great 
gray Palace of Art on the shores of Lake Michigan. 
Never since the confusion of tongues at Babel have 
so many religions, so many creeds, stood side by side, 
hand in hand, and almost heart to heart. Never 
since written history began has varied mankind been 
so bound about with golden chain's love. The na- 
tions of the earth, the creed of Christendom, Buddhist 
and Baptist, Mohammedan and Methodist, Catholic 
and Confucian, Brahmin and Unitarian, Shinto and 
Episcopalian, Presbyterian and pantheist, monotheist 
and polytheist, representing all shades of thought and 
conditions of men, at last met together in the com- 
mon bond of sympathy, humanity and respect. On 
the great platform of Columbus Hall sat the repre- 

333 



324 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

sentatives of creeds and sects that in bygone days 
hated one another with a hatred that knew no mod- 
eration. 

The last and closing scene of the great parliament 
of religions is one that will live forever in the memory 
of those who were fortunate to be spectators. The 
great hall of Columbus was illuminated by a myriad of 
lights. Every inch of room was used by the greatest 
crowd that ever sat within its walls. On the stage, 
beneath the folds of the flags of all nations, were the 
representatives of all religions. The dull black and 
somber raiment of the west only intensified the ra- 
diantly contrasted garbs of the oriental priests. All 
colors, red, yellow, blue, purple, gold and black, 
were woven in one common woof. 

The final session opened as usual by the audience 
rising and offering the silent prayer, after which the 
Apollo Club, led by Professor Tomlins, sang Cardinal 
Newman's hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." 

Rev. John Henry Barrows then introduced the 
first speaker of the evening, Dr. Alfred Williams 
Momerie, of England. Then followed the distinguished 
representatives of the Orient and other foreign coun- 
tries. Each speaker was limited to five minutes, and, 
as each one concluded he was escorted to the Hall of 
Washington, where an overflow meeting was held. 
The same programme was carried out in the Hall of 
Washington as in Columbus Hall. 

BENEDICTION AT PARTING. 

After all of the speakers had made their farewell 
remarks, Dr. John Henry Barrows arose, and, lifting 
his hand, said merely: 



LAST WORDS $2$ 

The parliament now stands adjourned: Peace on 
earth and good will towards men. 

This refrain was taken up by the Apollo chorus, 
and, as the great audience moved slowly out jof the 
hall the glad refrain was carried along. 

"The demands of the occasion," said Mr. Bonney, 
"require the utmost possible economy of our time. 
We shall endeavor to present during the evening a 
large number of brief speeches rather than a few long 
ones. Dr. Barrows will now present some of the 
distinguished guests whom we have entertained dur- 
ing the past three weeks and who have taken such an 
active part in the world's parliament of religions." 

"You are to hear to-night," said Dr. Barrows, 
stepping to the reading desk, "more than twenty brief 
speeches and, of course, all words of introduction 
mast be few. The first speaker whom I have the 
honor to introduce is Dr. Alfred M. Momerie, of Lon- 
don, whom we all knew as a brilliant man, and whom 
we all have discovered is a very lovable man, and 
he has come to love the white city, Chicago and the 
parliament of religions. When he goes back to his 
native land and stands on London bridge again, and 
thinks of the world's fair, he will no doubt say: 
"Though lost to sight, to Momerie dear." [Laughter.] 

THREE THINGS SAID BY DR. MOMERIE. 

Dr. Momerie, who received a hearty greeting, spoke 
as follows: 

Before we part I wish to say three things. First of 
all I want to tender my warmest congratulations to 
Dr. Barrows. I do not believe there is another man 



326 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

living who could have carried this congress through 
and- made it such a gigantic success. [Applause.] It 
needed a head, a heart, an energy, a common sense 
and a pluck such as I have never known to be united 
before in a single individual. 

During my stay in Chicago it has been my singu- 
lar good fortune to be received as a guest by the kind, 
est of hosts and the most charming of hostesses, and 
among the many pleasures of their brilliant and de- 
lightful tables one of the greatest has been that I have 
sat day by day by Dr. Barrows, and day by day I have 
learned to admire and love him more. [Applause.] 
In the successes that lie before him in the future I 
shall always take the keenest interest; but he has al- 
ready achieved something that will eclipse all. As 
chairman of this first parliament of religions he has 
won immortal glory which nothing in the future can 
diminish, which I fancy nothing in the future can 
very much augment. 

Secondly, I should like to offer my congratulations 
to the American people. This parliament of religions 
has been held in the new world. I confess I wish it 
had been held in the old world, in my own country, 
and that it had had its origin in my own church. It 
is the greatest event so far in the history of the world, 
and it has been held on American soil. I congratu- 
ulate the people of America. Their example will be 
followed in time to come in other countries and by 
other peoples, but there is one honor which will al- 
ways be America's — the honor of having led the way. 
[Applause.] And certainly I should like to offer my 
congratulations to you, the citizens of Chicago. 

GREATER THAN ALL THE REST. 

While our minds are full of the parliament, I cannot 



LAST WORDS 327 

forget the fair. I have seen all the expositions of 
Europe during the last ten or twelve years and I am 
sure I do not exaggerate when I say that your exposi- 
tion is greater than all the rest put together. [Ap- 
plause.] But your parliament of religions is far greater 
than your exposition. [Applause.] There have 
been plenty of expositions before. Yours is the best, 
but it is a comparatively common thing. The par- 
liament of religions is a new thing in the world. Most 
people, even those who regarded the idea with pleas- 
ure, thought that it was an impossibility. But it has 
been achieved. Here in this Hall of Columbus vast 
audiences have assembled day after day, the members 
of which came from all churches and from all sects 
and sometimes from no church at all. Here they sat 
side by side during long — I had almost said weary 
hours; the hours would have been weary but for their 
enthusiasm. Here they sat side by side during the 
long hours of the day listening to doctrines which 
they had been taught to regard with contempt, listen- 
ing with respect, with sympathy, with an earnest desire 
to learn something which would improve their own 
doctrines. 

And here on the platform have sat as brethren the 
representatives of churches and sects which, during 
by-gone centuriesh, ated and cursed one another, and 
scarcely a word has fallen from any of us which could 
possibly give offense. If occasionally the old Adam 
did show itself, if occasionally something was said 
which had been better left unsaid, no harm was done. 
It only served to kindle into a flame of general and 
universal enthusiasm your brotherly love. [Applause.] 
It seemed an impossibility, but here in Chicago the 
impossible has been realized. You have shown that 
you do not believe in impossibilities. It could not 



328 

have been realized but for you. It could not have been 
realized without your sympathy and your enthusiasm. 
Citizens of Chicago, I congratulate you. If you 
show yourselves in other things as great as you have 
shown yourselves in regard to this parliament of re- 
ligions, most assuredly the time will come when Chi- 
cago will be the first city in America, the first city 
in the world. [Applause.] 

MR. MOZOOMDAR OF THE BRAHMO-SOMAJ. 

Dr. Barrows next introduced Rev. P. C. Mozoom- 
dar of the Brahmo-Somaj, who delivered the follow- 
ing address: 

Brethren of Different Faiths: — This parliament 
of religions, this concourse of spirits, is to break up 
before to-morrow's sun. What lessons have we learned 
from our incessant labors? Firstly, the charge of ma- 
terialism, laid against the age in general and against 
America in particular, is refuted forever. Could these 
myriads have spent their time, their energy, neglected 
their business, their pleasures, to be present with us 
if their spirit had not risen above their material needs 
or carnal desires? The spirit dominates still over 
matter and over mankind. 

Secondly, the unity of purpose and feeling unmis- 
takably shown in the harmonious proceedings of these 
seventeen days teaches that men with opposite views, 
denominations with contradictory principles and his- 
tories, can form one congregation, one household, one 
body, for however short a time, when animated by 
one spirit. Who is or what is that spirit? It is the 
spirit of God himself. This unity of man with man 
is the unity of man with God, and the unity of man 
with man in God is the kingdom of heaven. When 



LAST WORDS 329 

I came here by the invitation of you, Mr. President, 
I came with the hope of seeing the object of my life- 
long faith and labors, viz., the harmony of religions 
effected. The last public utterance of my leader, 
Keshub Chunder Sen, made in 1883, in his lecture 
called "Asia's Message to Europe," was this: 

Here will meet the world's representatives, the 
foremost spirits, the most living hearts, the leading 
thinkers and devotees of each church, and offer united 
homage to the kingdom of kings and the Lord of Lords. 
This central union church is no Utopian fancy, but a 
veritable reality, whose beginning we see already among 
the nations of the earth. Already the right wing of 
each church is pressing forward, and the advanced lib- 
erals are drawing near each other under the central 
banner of the new dispensation. 

Believe me, the time is coming when the more lib- 
eral of the Catholic and Protestant branches of Christ's 
church will advance and meet upon a common platform 
and form a broad Christian community, in which all 
shall be identified, in spite of all diversities and differ- 
ences in non-essential matters of faith. So shall the 
Baptists and Methodists, Trinitarians and Unitarians, 
the Ritualists and the Evangelical, all unite in a broad 
and universal church organization, loving, honoring, 
serving the common body while retaining the peculiar- 
ities of each sect. Only the broad of each sect shall 
for the present come forward, and others shall follow 
in time. 

The base remains where it is: the vast masses at 
the foot of each church will yet remain perhaps for 
centuries where they now are. But as you look to the 
lofty heights above you will see all the bolder spirits 
and broad souls of each church pressing forward, 
onward, heavenward. Come, then, my friends, ye 
broad-hearted of all the churches, advance and shake 
hands with each other and promote that spiritual fel- 
lowship, that kingdom of heaven which Christ pre- 
dicted. 



330 THE world's congress of religions 

Christ's prophecy fulfilled. 

These words were said in 1883 and in 1893 every 
letter of the prophecy has been fulfilled. The king- 
dom of heaven is to my mind a vast concentric circle 
with various circumferences of doctrines, authorities 
and organizations from outer to inner, from inner to 
inner still until heaven and earth become one. The 
outermost circle is belief in God and the love of man. 
In the tolerance, kindliness, good-will, patience and 
wisdom which have distinguished the work of this 
parliament that outermost circle of the kingdom of 
heaven has been described. We have influenced vast 
number of men and women of all opinions and the in- 
fluence will spread and spread. So many human unities 
drawn within the magnetic circle of spiritual sympathy 
cannot but influence and widen the various denomina- 
tions to which they belong. In the course of time those 
inner circles must widen also till the love of man and 
the love of God are perfected in one church, one God, 
one salvation. 

I conclude with acknowledging the singular cordial- 
ity and appreciation extended to us orientals. Where 
every one has done so well we did not deserve special 
honor, but undeserved as the honor may be, it shows 
the greatness of your leaders and especially of your 
chairman, Dr. Barrows. Dr. Barrows, humanly speak- 
ing, has been the soul of this noble movement. The 
profoundest blessings of the present and future gen- 
erations shall follow him. 

And now farewell. For once in history all religions 
have made their peace, all nations have called each 
other brothers, and their representatives have for sev» 
enteen days stood up morning after morning to pray 
Our Father, the universal father of all, in heaven. 



LAST WORDS 331 

His will has been done so far, and in the great com- 
ing future may that blessed will be done further and 
further, forever and ever. [Applause.] 

BELOVED VOICE FROM RUSSIA. 

"We have heard a voice from India," said Dr. Bar- 
rows. "Let us hear a well-beloved voice from Rus- 
sia." Prince Serge Wolkonski then spoke as follows: 

I hardly realize that it is for the last time in my 
life I have the honor, the pleasure, the fortune to speak 
to you. On this occasion, I should like to tell you so 
many things that I am afraid that if I give free course 
to my sentiments I will feel the delicate but impera- 
tive touch of Mr. President's hand on my shoulder long 
before I reach the end of my speech. Therefore, I 
will say thanks to all of you ladies and gentlemen in 
the shortest possible words — thanks for your kind at- 
tention, for your kind applause, your kind laughter, 
for your hearty hand shakes. You will believe how 
deeply I am obliged to you when I tell you that this 
was the first time in my life that I ever took an active 
part in a congress, and I wish any enterprise I might 
undertake later on might leave me such happy remem- 
brances as this first experience. 

Before bidding you farewell, I want to express a 
wish ; may the good feelings you have shown me so 
many times, may they, through my unworthy personal- 
ity, spread to the people of my country, whom you 
know so little and whom I love so much. If I ask you 
that, it is because I know the prejudices which pre- 
vail among the people of your country. A compatriot 
said the other day that Russians thought all Ameri- 
cans were angels, and that Americans thought all Rus- 



332 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

sians were brutes. Now, once in a while, these angels 
and these brutes come together and both are deceived 
in their expectations. We see that you are certainly 
not angels, and you see we are not quite as much brute 
as you thought we were. 

Now why this disappointment? Why this surprise? 
Why this astonishment? Because we won't remember 
that we are men and nothing else and nothing more. 
We cannot be anything more, for to be a man is the 
highest thing we can pretend to be on this earth. I 
do not know whether many have learned in the ses- 
sions of this parliament what respect of God is, but 
I know that no one will leave the congress without 
having learned what respect of man is. And should 
the parliament of religions of 1893 have no other re- 
sult but this, it is enough to make the names of Dr. 
Barrows and those who have helped him imperishable 
in the history of humanity. 

JUDGING OUR FELLOW MAN. 

Should this congress have no other result than to 
teach us to judge our fellow man by his individual 
value, and not by the political opinions he may 
have of his country, I will express my gratitude to 
the congress, not only in the name of those your broth- 
ers who are my countrymen, but in the name of those 
our brothers whom we so often revile because the po- 
litical traditions of their country refuse the recogni 
tion of home rule; in the name of those our fellow 
men whose motherland stands on the neck of India; 
in the name of those our brothers whom we so often 
blame only because the governments of their countries 
send rapacious armies on the western, southern and 
eastern coasts of Africa: I will express my gratitude 
to the congress in the name of those my brothers whom 



LAST WORDS 333 

we often judge so wrongly because of the cruel treat- 
ment their government inflicts upon the Chinese. I 
will congratulate the congress in the name of the 
whole world if those who have been here have learned 
that, as long as politics and politicians exist, there is 
no happiness possible on earth. I will congratulate 
the congress in the name of the whole humanity if 
those who have attended sessions have realized that 
it is a crime to be astonished when we see that an- 
other human being is a man like ourselves. 

Now Dr. Bonney, one word to you personally: All 
I have said in thanking these ladies and gentlemen, 
I beg you to accept for yourself for all I owe to them 
is due to your kindness. I pray you to accept my 
personal gratitude and the assurance that whenever I 
may be of any use to you, although on the other side 
of the earth St. Petersburg will be near enough to 
Chicago. No continents, no oceans, on distances will 
ever prevent me from reaching a friendly hand to 
President Bonney nor to any of the distinguished gen- 
tlemen and ladies I am so happy to have met and 
known. 

FROM JAPAN AND CHINA. 

"We have a splendid delegation from the sunrise 
kingdom of Japan," then remarked Dr. Barrows, 
"and I'm going to ask our friends, the Buddhist rep- 
resentatives of Japan, to rise as their names are 
called, and then our eloquent friend, Mr. Hirai, will 
speak for them." 

The four Buddhist priests, attired in the full vest- 
ments of their order, arose and saluted the audience. 
"Mr. Hirai," continued Dr. Barrows, "has lived for 
several years in our country. His voice was one of 



334 THE world's congress of religions 

the first to thrill us through and through as he told 
us of the wrongs so-called Christian civilization had 
committed in Japan. I now have the pleasure of 
introducing him." Mr. Hirai, after returning warm 
thanks for kindnesses, said: 

We cannot but admire the tolerant forbearance 
and compassion of the people of the civilized West. 
You are the pioneers in human history. You have 
achieved an assembly of the world's religions, and we 
believe your next step will be toward the ideal goal 
of this parliament, the realization of international jus- 
tice. We ourselves desire to witness its fulfillment in 
our lifetime and to greet you again with our deepest 
admiration. By your kind hospitality we have forgot- 
ten that we are strangers, and we are very much at- 
tached to this city. To leave here makes us feel as if 
we were leaving our native country. To part with 
you makes us feel as if we were parting from oar own 
sisters and brothers. When we think of our home- 
ward journey we cannot help shedding tears. Farewell. 
The cold winter is coming, and we earnestly wish at 
you may be in good health. Farewell. 

"The oldest and greatest of empires," said Dr. 
Barrows, "is China. The Honorable Pung Quang 
Yu, special commissioner to this congress, will now 
address you." Instead of reading his own speceh 
Mr. Pung Quang Yu simply arose and saluted the as- 
sembly and handed his manuscript to Dr. Barrows, 
who read it. After the formal thanks it is as follows: 

It is unnecessary for me to touch upon the existing 
relations between the government of China and that 
of the United States. There is no doubt that the 



LAST WORDS 335 

Chinese minister at Washington and the honorable 
secretary of state are well able to deal with every ques- 
tion rising between the two countries in a manner sat- 
isfactory and honorable to both. As I am a delegate to 
the religious congresses, I cannot but feel that all the 
religious people are my friend. I have a favor to ask 
of all the religious people of America, and that is that 
they will treat, hereafter, all my countrymen just as 
they have treated me. I shall be a hundred times more 
grateful to them for the kind treatment of my country- 
men than of myself. I am sure that the Americans in 
China receive just such considerate treatment from 
the cultured people of China as I have received from 
you. The majority of my countrymen in this country 
are honest and law abiding, Christ teaches us that it 
is not enough to love one's brethren only. I am sure 
that all religious people will not think this request 
too extravagant. 

It is my sincere hope that no national differences 
will ever interrupt the friendly relations between the 
two governments and that the two people will equally 
enjoy the protection and blessings of heaven. I intend 
to leave this country shortly. I shall take great pleas- 
ure in reporting to my government the proceedings of 
this parliament upon my return. With this I desire 
to bid all my friends farewell. 

After reading Pung Quang Yu's address Dr. Barrows 
remarked that the words of the distinguished Chinese 
diplomat would be imparted to our government and 
it was expected that they would result in destroying 
the obnoxious Geary law. 

FAREWELL OF A SHINTO PRIEST. 

Mr. Barrows then introduced Right Rev. Mr. Sha- 
bita, high-priest of the Shinto religion, of Japan. The 



336 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

Japanese delegate arose and bowed profoundly. Dr. 
Barrows read his address, as follows: 

I am here in the pulpit again to express my thanks 
for the kindness, hearty welcome and applause I have 
been enjoying at your hands ever since I came her 
to Chicago. You have shown great sympathy with 
my humble opinion, and your newspaper men have 
talked of me in high terms. I am happy that I have 
had the honor of listening to so many famous scholars 
and preachers forwarding the same opinion of the ne- 
cessity of universal brotherhood and humanity. I am 
deeply impressed with the peace, politeness and edu- 
cation which characterize your audiences. But is it 
not too sad that such pleasures are always short-lived? 
I, who made acquaintance with you only yesterday, 
have to part with you to-day, though reluctantly. This 
parliament of religion is the most remarkable event in 
history, and it is the first honor in my life to have 
the privilege of appearing before you to pour out my 
humble idea, which was so well accepted by you all. 
You like me, but I think it is not the mortal Shabita 
that you like, but you like the immortal idea of uni- 
versal brotherhood. 

What I wish to do is to assist you in carrying out 
the plan of forming the universal brotherhood under 
the one roof of truth. You know unity is power. I, 
who can speak no language but Japanese, may help 
you in crowning that grand project with success. To 
come here I had many obstacles to overcome, many 
struggles to make. You must not think I represent 
all Shintoism. I only represent my own Shinto sect. 
But who dares to destroy universal fraternity. So long 
as the sun and moon continue to shine all friends of 
truth must be willing to fight courageously for this 




H. DHARMAPAU, WITH THE IMAGE OF BI'DDAH. 

He was born in 1864, is General Secretary of the Maha-Bodhi Society of Calcutta, 
and editor of the "Journal of the Maha-Bodhi Society."" 



LAST WORDS 337 

great principle. I do not know as I shall ever see 
you again in this life, but our souls have been so 
pleasantly united here that I hope they may be again 
united in the life hereafter. 

Now I pray that 8,000,000 deities protecting the 
beautiul cherry tree country of Japan may protect you 
and your government forever, and with this I bid you 
good-by. 

LOFTY THOUGHTS FROM A HINDU. 

Dr. Barrows in introducing H. Dharmapala, of 
Ceylon, said his voice had often been heard with 
greatest pleasure in the parliament. Mr. Dharmapala 
said: 

Peace, blessings and salutations — Brethren: — This 
congress of religions has achieved a stupendous work 
in bringing before you the representatives of the relig- 
ions and philosophies of the east. The committee on 
religious congresses has realized the Utopian idea of 
the poet and the visionary. By the wonderful genius 
of two men — Mr. Bonney and Dr. Barrows — a beacon 
light has been erected on the platform of the Chicago 
parliament of religions to guide the yearning souls after 
truth. 

I, on behalf of the 475,000,000 of my co-religionists, 
followers of the gentle Lord, Buddha Gautama, ten- 
der my affectionate regards to you and to Dr. John 
Henry Barrows, a man of noble tolerance, of sweet 
disposition, whose equal I could hardly find. And 
you, my brothers and sisters, born in this land of free- 
dom, you have learned from your brothers of the far 
east their presentation of the respective religious sys- 
tems they follow. You have listened with commenda- 
ble patience to the teachings of the all-merciful Bud- 

Congress of Religions 22 



338 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

dha through his humble followers. During his earthly 
career of forty-five years he labored in emancipating 
the human mind from religious prejudices, and teach- 
ing a doctirne which has made Asia mild. By the 
patient and laborious researches of the men of science 
you are given to enjoy the fruits of material civiliza- 
tion, but this civilization by itself finds no praise at 
the hands of the great naturalists of the day. 

Learn to think without prejudice, love all beings 
for love's sake, express your convictions fearlessly, 
lead a life of purity and the sunlight of truth will il- 
luminate you. If theology and dogma stand in your 
way in the search of truth, put them aside. Be earnest 
and work out your own salvation with diligence ; and 
the fruits of holiness will be yours. 

REJOICINGS OF A MISSIONARY. 

Rev. Dr. George T. Candlin, of China was next in- 
troduced and spoke as follows: 

It is with deepest joy that I take my part in the 
congratulations of this closing day. The parliament 
has more than justified my most sanguine expectations. 
As a missionary I anticipate that it will make a new 
era of missionary enterprise and missionary hope. If 
it does not it will not be your fault, and let those 
take the blame who make it otherwise. Very sure I 
am that at least one missionary, who counts himself 
the humblest member of this noble assembly, will 
carry through every day of work, through every hour 
of effort on till the sun of life sets on the completion 
of his task, the strengthening memory and uplifting 
inspiration of this penticost. 

By this parliament the City of Chicago has placed 



LAST WORDS 339 

herself far away above all the cities of the earth. In 
this school you have learned what no other town or 
city in the world yet knows. The conventional idea 
of religion which obtains among Christians the world 
over is that Christianity is true, all other religions 
false; that Christianity is of God, while other relig- 
ions are of the devil; or else, with a little spice of 
moderation, that Christianity is a revelation from 
Heaven, while other religions are manufactures of 
men. You know better, and with clear light and 
strong assurance can testify that there may be friend- 
ship instead of antagonism between religion and relig- 
ion, that so surely as God is our common father, our 
hearts alike have yearned for him and our souls in de- 
voutest moods have caught whispers of grace dropped 
from h ; s throne. 

Then this is Pentecost, and behind is the conversion 
of the world. 

FROM SUAMI VIVE KANANDA. 

Suami Vive Kananda being introduced, made his 
farewell as follows: 

The world's parliament of religions has become an 
accomplished fact and the merciful Father has helped 
those who labored to bring it into existence and 
crowned with success their most unselfish labor. 

My thanks to those noble souls whose large hearts 
and love of truth first dreamed this wonderful dream 
and then realized it. My thanks to the shower of lib- 
eral sentiments that has overflowed this platform. My 
thanks to this enlightened audience for their uniform 
kindness to me and for their appreciation of every 
thought that tends to smooth the friction of religions. 
A few jarring notes were heard from time to time in 



34-0 THE world's congress of religions 

this harmony. My special thanks to them, for they 
have by their striking contrast made the general har- 
mony the sweeter. 

Much has been said of the common ground of relig- 
ious unity. I am not going just now to venture my 
own theory. But if any one here hopes that this unity 
would come by the triumph of any one of these relig- 
ions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, 
"Brother, yours is an impossible hope." Do I wish 
that the Christian would become Hindoo? God for- 
bid. Do I wish that the Hindoo or Buddhist would 
become Christians? God forbid. 

The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air 
and water are placed around it. Do the seed become 
the earth, or the air, or the water? No. It becomes 
a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, 
assimilates the air, the earth and the water, converts 
them into plant subtance and grows a plant. 

Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is 
not to become a Hindoo or a Buddhist, nor a Hindoo 
or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must 
assimilate the other and yet preserve its individuality 
and grow according to its own law of growth. 

If the parliament of religions has shown anything to 
the world it is this: It has proved to the world that 
holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive 
possessions of any church in the world and that every 
system has produced men and women of the most ex- 
alted character. 

In the face of this evidence if anybody dreams of 
the exclusive survival of his own and the destruction 
of the others I pity him from the bottom of my heart 
and point out to him that upon the banner of every 
religion would soon be written, in spite of their re- 
sistance: "Help and Not Fight," "Assimilation andNot 



LAST WORDS 34I 

Destruction," "Harmony and Peace and Not Dissen- 
sion." 

VIRCHAND GHANDI'S STORY. 

Virchand Ghandi was greeted with much applause as 
he came forward to speak. He said: 

Are we not all sorry that we are parting so soon? 
Do we not wish that this parliament would last sev- 
enteen times seventeen days? Have we not heard with 
pleasure and interest the speeches of the learned rep- 
resentatives on this platform? Do we not see that the 
sublime dream of the organizers of this unique parlia- 
ment has been more than realized? If you will only 
permit a heathen to deliver his message of peace and 
love I shall only ask you to look at the multifarious 
ideas presented to you in a liberal spirit, and not with 
superstition and bigotry, as the seven blind men did 
in the elephant story. 

Once upon a time in a great city an elephant was 
brought with a circus. The people had never seen an 
elephant before. There were seven blind men in the 
city who longed to know what kind of an animal 
it was, so they went together to the place where 
the elephant was kept. One of them placed his 
hands on the ears, another on the legs, a third on 
the tail of the elephant, and so on. When they were 
asked by the people what kind of an animal the ele- 
phant was one of the blind men said: 'Oh, to be 
sure, the elephant is like a big winnowing fan." 
Another blind man said: "No, my dear sir, you are 
wrong. The elephant is more like a big, round post." 
The third : "You are quite mistaken; it is like a taper 
ing stick." The rest of them gave also their different 
opinions. The proprietor of the circus stepped for- 



342 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ward and said: "My friends, you are all mistaken. 
You have not examined the elephant from all sides. 
Had you done so you would not have taken one-sided 
views. " 

Brothers and sisters, I entreat you to hear the moral 
of this story and learn to examine the various relig- 
ious systems from all standpoints. 

I now thank you from the bottom of my heart for 
the kindness with which you have received us and for 
the liberal spirit and patience with which you have 
heard us. And to you, Rev. Dr. Barrows and President 
Bonney, we owe the deepest gratitude for the hospi- 
tality which you have extended to us. 

AFRICAN PRINCE MASAQUOI. 

Prince Momolu Masaquoi, of the Vey territory, 
Africa, was received with applause. He said: 

Permit me to express my hearty thanks to the chair- 
man of this congress for the honor conferred upon me 
personally by the privilege of representing Africa in 
this world's parliament of religions. There is an im- 
portant relationship which Africa sustains to this par- 
ticular gathering. Nearly 1,900 years ago, at the great 
dawn of Christian morning, we saw benighted Africa 
opening her doors to the infant Saviour Jesus Christ, 
afterward the founder of one of the greatest religions 
man ever embraced, and the teacher of the highest 
and noblest sentiments ever taught, whose teachings 
has resulted in the presence of this magnificent audi- 
ence. 

As I sat in this audience listening to the distinguished 
delegates and representatives in this assembly of learn- 
ing, of philosophy, of systems of religions represented 



Last words 343 

by scholarship and devout hearts, I said to myself : 
"What shall the harvest be?" 

The very atmosphere seems pregnant with an inde- 
finable, inexpressible something — something too solemn 
for human utterance — something I dare not attempt 
to express. Previous to this gathering the greatest 
enmity existed among the world's religions. To- 
night — I dare not speak as one seeing visions or dream- 
ing dreams — but this night it seems that the world's 
religions, instead of striking one against another, 
have come together in amicable deliberation and have 
created a lasting and congenial spirit among them- 
selves. May the coming together of these wise men 
result in the full realization of the general parliament 
of God, the brotherhood of man, and the consecration 
of souls to the service of God. 

VOICES FROM AMERICA. 

The Hallelujah chorus was then given by the great 
choir and received an encore. President Bonney 
said he did not wonder that the audience wanted to 
hear the Hallelujah chorus. It had never been given 
on a more august occasion. The gifted composer 
had probably never thought that it would be sung to 
the assembled religions of the world met upon an 
occasion like the present. He then announced that, 
having listened to the representatives of the far 
away countries, the audience would now be addressed 
by speakers from America in two-minute addresses. 
The first speaker was Rev: Dr. George Dana Board- 
man, of Philadelphia, who simply said: 

Fathers of the contemplative east; sons of the ex- 
ecutive west — behold how good and how pleasant it 



344 THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

is for brethren to dwell together in unity. [Ap- 
plause.] The New Jerusalem, the city of God, is de- 
scending, heaven and earth chanting the eternal hal- 
lelujah chorus. 

Dr. Emil Hirsch added his word of farewell with 
characteristic eloquence. He said: 

The privilege of being with you on the morning 
when, in glory under God's blessing, this parliament 
was opened was denied me At the very hour when 
here the first words of consecration were spoken I and 
all other rabbis were attending worship in our own 
little temples and could thus only in spirit be with 
you, who were come together in this much grander 
temple. But we all iielt when the trumpet in our rit- 
ual announced the birth of a new religious year, that 
here blazoned forth at that very moment the clearer 
blast heralding for all humanity the dawn of a new 
era. 

None could appreciate the deeper significance of 
this parliament more fully than we, the heirs of a 
past spanning the millennia, and the motive of whose 
achievements and fortitude was and is the confident 
hope of the ultimate break of the millennium. Mil- 
lions of my co-religionists hoped that this convocation 
of this modern great synagogue would sound the death 
knell of hatred and prejudice under which the)' have 
pined and are still suffering; and their hope has not 
been disappointed. Of old, Palestine's hills were every 
month aglow with firebrands announcing the rise of 
a new month. 

NEW PERIOD OF TIME MARKED. 

So here were kindled the cheering fires telling the 
whole world that a new period of time had been con- 



last words 345 

secrated. We Jews came hither to give and to re- 
ceive. For what little we could bring we have been 
richly rewarded in the precious things we received in 
turn. 

According to an old rabbinical practice friends among 
us never part without first discussing some problem 
of religious life. Our whole parliament has been de- 
voted to such discussion, and we take hence, in part- 
ing, with us the richest treasures of religious instruc- 
tion ever laid before man. Thus the old Talmudic 
promise will be verified in us that when even three 
come together to study God's law his Shekinah abides 
with them. 

Then let me bid you godspeed in the old Jewish 
salutation of peace. When one is carried to his rest- 
ing place we Jews will bid him go in peace, but when 
one who is still in the land of the living turns from 
us to go to his daily task we greet him with the phrase, 
"Go thou toward peace." Let me then speed you on 
your way toward peace. For the parliament is not the 
gateway to death. It is a new portal to a new life ; 
for all of us a life of greater love for and greater trust 
in one another. Peace will not yet come but is to 
come. It will come when the seed here planted shall 
sprout up to blossom and fruitage; when no longer 
we see through a blurred glass, but, like Moses, of 
old, through a translucent mirror. May God then bless 
you, Brother Chairman, whose loyalty and zeal have 
led us safely through the night of doubt to this bright 
hour of a happy and glorious consummation. 

METHODISM'S FAITH AND HOPE. 

"There are five millions of Methodists in the United 
States, "said Mr. Bonney, "and Rev. Dr. Frank Bris- 



346 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

tol will tell us what the Methodists think of the par- 
liament of religions." Dr. Bristol said, beginning his 
speech with the following quotation: 

Then let us pray that come it may, 

As come it will for a' that, 
That man to man, the warl' o'er, 

Shall brithers be for a' that. 

Infinite good and only good will come from this par- 
liament. To all who have come from afar we are 
profoundly and eternally indebted. Some of them rep- 
resent civilization that was old when a Romulus was 
founding Rome, whose philosophies and songs were 
ripe in wisdom and rich in rhythm before Homer sang 
his Iliads to the Greeks, and they have enlarged our 
ideas of our common humanity. They have brought 
to us fragrant flowers from the gardens of eastern 
faiths, rich gems from the old mines of great philoso- 
phies, and we are richer to-night from their contribu- 
tions of thought and particularly from our contact 
with them in spirit. 

Never was there such a bright and hopeful day for 
our common humanity along the lines of tolerance and 
universal, brotherhood. And we shall find that by the 
words that these visitors have brought to us and by 
the influence they have exerted they will be richly re- 
warded in the consciousness of having contributed to 
the mighty movement which holds in itself the prom- 
ise of one faith, one lord, one father, one brother- 
hood. A distinguished writer has said it is always 
morn somewhere in the world. The time hastens when 
a greater thing will be said — 'tis always morn every- 
where in the world. The darkness has passed, the 
day is at hand, and with it will come the greater hu- 
manity, the universal brotherhood. 



LAST WORDS 347 

The blessings of our God and our Father be with 
you, brethren from the east ; the blessings of our Sa- 
viour, our elder brother, the teacher of the brotherhood 
of man, be with you and your people forever. 

REV. JENKIN LLOYD JONES. 

President Bonney next presented Rev. Jenkin Lloyd 
Jones, secretary of the parliament. Mr. Jones said; 

I had rather be a doorkeeper in this open house of 
the Lord than to dwell in the tents of bigotry. I am 
sufficiently happy in the knowledge that I have been 
enabled to be to a certain extent the feet of this great 
triumph. I stand before you to-night with my brain 
badly addled, with my voice a good deal demoralized, 
with my heels somewhat blistered, but with my heart 
warm and loving and happy. 

I bid to you, the parting guests, the godspeed that 
comes out of a soul that is glad to recognize its kin- 
ship with all lands and with all religions; and when 
you go, you go not only leaving behind you in our 
hearts more hospitable thoughts for the faiths you 
represent, but also warm and loving ties that bind you 
into the union that will be our joy and our life forever- 
more. 

But I will not stand between you and your further 
pleasures except to venture, in the presence of this 
vast and happy audience, a motion which I propose 
to repeat in the next hall, and, if both audiences ap- 
prove, who dare say that the motion may not be re- 
alized? It has been often said, and I have been among 
those who have been saying it, that we have been 
witnessing here in these last seventeen days what will 
not be given men now living again to see; but as these 
meetings have grown in power and accumulative spirit 



34§ 

I have felt my doubts give way, and already I see in 
vision the next parliament of religions more glorious 
and more hopeful than this. And I have sent my mind 
around the globe to find a fitting place for the next 
parliament. When I looked upon these gentle breth- 
ren from Japan I have imagined that away out there 
in the calms of the Pacific ocean we may in the City 
of Tokio meet again in some great parliament. But 
I am not satisfied to stop in that half-way land, and so 
I have thought we must go farther and meet in that 
great English dominion of India itself. 

At first I thought that Bombay might be a good 
place, or Calcutta a better place, but I have concluded 
to move that the next parliament of religion be held 
on the sacred banks of the Ganges in the ancient, new 
City of Benares, where we can visit these brethren at 
their noblest headquarters. And when we go there 
we will do as they have done, leaving our heavy bag- 
gage behind, going in light marching order, carrying 
only the working principles that are applicable in all 
lands. 

Now when shall that great parliament meet? It 
used to take a long time to get around the world, but 
I believe that we are ready here to-night to move that 
we shall usher in the twentieth century with a great 
parliament of religion in Benares, and we shall make 
John Henry Barrows president of it, too. 

MRS. HENROTIN SPEAKS FOR WOMEN. 

Mrs. Henrotin, vice-president of the woman's 
branch of the world's congress auxiliary, next spoke. 
She said: 

The place which woman has taken in the parlia- 
ment of religions and in the denominational con- 



LAST WORDS 349 

gresses is one of such great importance that it is en- 
titled to your careful attention. 

As day by day the parliament has presented the re- 
sult of the preliminary work of two years, it may 
have appeared to you an easy thing to put into mo- 
tion the forces of which this evening is the crowning 
achievement, but to bring about this result hundreds 
of men and women have labored. There are sixteen 
committees of women in the various departments rep- 
resented in the parliament of religions and denomina- 
tional congresses, with a total membership of 228. In 
many cases the men and the women's committee have 
elected to work as one and in others the women have 
held separated congresses. Sixteen women have spoken 
in the parliament of religions, and that more did not 
appear is due to the fact that the denominational com- 
mittee had secured the most prominent women for 
their presentation. 

Dr. Barrows treated the woman's branch with that 
courtesy and consideration and, I may add, justice 
which he has extended to the representative of every 
creed. 

In the denominational congresses the first in order 
was that of the Jewish women, and here is the key- 
note to woman's position on the modern religious 
world. It is that of the worker, for it is not in the 
parliament of religions, as able as has been the wo- 
men representing her in the parliament, that you can 
judge of the tremendous power which she wields. It 
is in the denominational congress that herwork is best 
illustrated. 

HER WORK IN THE CHURCH. 

In the Roman Catholic congress the work of the wo- 
men for their church was most ably presented. His 



350 THE world's congress of religions 

Eminence Cardinal Gibbons in his paper, "The Needs 
of Humanity Supplied by the Catholic Religion, " dem- 
onstrated that the needs of humanity were ministered 
unto by women, laity as well as sisters, in the Cath- 
olic church. His paper could fitly have been named 
"What Woman Has Accomplished for the Catholic 
Church." 

The congress of the Jewish woman was a memorable 
occasion, as it was the first time in the world's histo- 
ry that the Jewish women met together as a religious 
power. Eighty-five delegates from the different Jew- 
ish communities from all parts of the United States 
were present, and before this congress adjourned an 
international association of Jewish women was formed, 
which, if it brings into the religious world the same 
zeal which has animated that historic race, it is easy 
to conceive what a tremendous force has here been 
put into motion. 

The committee of Congregational women held an in- 
teresting session treating of practical questions con- 
nected with church work. 

The women of the Lutheran church succeeded in 
uniting the Lutheran women all over the UnitedStates 
in one congress and held four sessions in which Luth- 
eran women spoke on the work of women in their 
church. Before this congress closed an international 
league of Lutheran women \vas formed. 

The King's Daughters presented their work on Mon- 
day, October 2. In all the other denominational con- 
gresses women have presented their work in the gen- 
eral congress. Two hundred and twelve women have 
taken part in the denominational and mission con- 
gresses. 

Now the question presents itself, along what line 
of thought have most of these women presented pa- 



LAST WORDS 351 

pers? And I may truly answer that they have treated 
of practical efforts for the bettering of social con- 
ditions. 

woman's future in the church. 

It is too soon to prognosticate woman's future in 
the chuiches. Hitherto she has been not the thinker, 
the formulator of creeds, but the silent worker. That 
day has passed; it remains for her to take her rightful 
position in the active government of the church, and 
to the question, if men will accord that position to 
her, my experience and that of the chairman of the 
women's committees warrant us in answering an em- 
phatic yes. Her future in the western churches is in 
her own hands, and the men of the eastern churches 
will be emboldened by the example of the western to 
return to their country and bid our sisters of those 
distant lands to go and do likewise. 

Woman has taken very literally Christ's command to 
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and 
to minister unto those who are in need of such min- 
istrations; as her influence and power increase, so also 
will her zeal for good works. That the experiment 
of an equal presentation of men and women in a par- 
liament of religions has not been a failure I think can 
be proved by the part taken by the women who have 
had the honor of being called to participate in this 
great gathering. 

I must now bear witness to the devotion, the unsel- 
fishness, and the zeal of the chairman of every com- 
mittee who have assisted in arranging these pro- 
grammes. I would that I had the time to name them 
one by one. Their generous co-operation and unselfish 
endeavor are of those good things the memory of which 
is in this life a foreshadowing of how divine is the prin- 



352 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

ciple of loyal co-operation in working for righteous- 
ness.. 

GREATEST GATHERING ON EARTH. 

Rev. Augusta Chapin spoke as follows: 

The past seventeen days has seemed to many of us 
the fulfillment of a dream; nay, the fulfillment of a 
long cherished prophecy. The seers of olden time 
foretold a day when there should be concord, some- 
thing like what we have seen among elements before 
time discordant. 

We have heard of the fatherhood of God, the broth- 
erhood of man, and the solidarity of the human race, 
until these great words and truths have penetrated our 
minds and sunken into our hearts as never before. 
They will henceforth have larger meaning. No one 
of us all but has been intellectually strengthened and 
spiritually uplifted. We have been sitting together 
upon the mountain of the Lord. We shall never 
descend to the lower places where our feet have some- 
times trod in times past. I have tried, as I have list- 
ened to these masterly addresses, to imagine what 
effect this comparative study of religions would have 
upon the religious world and upon individual souls 
that come directly under the sweep of its influence. 
It is not too much to hope that a great impulse has 
been given to the cause of religious unity, and to pure 
and undefiled religion in all lands. 

We who welcomed now speed the parting guests. 
We are glad you came, O wise men of the east. 
With your wise words, your large toleration and your 
gentle ways we have been glad to sit at your feet and 
learn of you in these things. We are glad to have 
seen you face to face, and we shall count you hence- 








BISHOP B. W. ARNETT. D.D., 

of the African M. R. Church, was bora in 1838. He was author of the bills abolishing 

the Black Laws of Ohio ; of teaching scientific temperance in the public 

schools, and he organized the U. O. O. F. and other 

societies among the colored people. 



LAST WORDS 353 

forth more than ever our friends and co-workers in the 
great things of religion. 

And we are glad, now that you are going to your 
far away homes, to tell the story of all that has been 
said and done h^re in this great parliament, and that 
you will thus bring the orient into nearer relations 
with the Occident, and make plain the sympathy which 
exists among all religions. We are glad for the words 
that have been spoken by the wise men and women 
of the west, who have come and have given us their 
grains of gold after the washing. What I said in the 
beginning I will repeat now at the ending of this 
parliament. It has been the greatest gathering ever, 
in the name 01 religion, held on the face of this earth. 

FAREWELL OF BISHOP ARNETT. 

As Mrs. Chapin took her seat President Bonney 
stepped to the desk and, in a few eloquent words, in- 
troduced that old apostle of human freedom, Julia 
Ward Howe. There were cheers and waving of 
handkerchiefs and great tumult when the venerable 
woman appeared at the desk. When quiet was re- 
stored she said: "Dear friends, I wish I had brought 
you some great and supreme gift of wisdom. I have 
brought you a heart brimming with love and thank- 
fulness for this crown of the ages, so blessed in itself 
and so full of a more blessed prophecy. But I did 
not expect to speak to-night." 

President Bonney next introduced Bishop Arnett, 
the distinguished colored divine, who addressed the 
audience in the following eloquent speech: 

It is an old saying, and true, that there is no road 
however long but by continued marches you will find 

Congress of Religions 23 



354 THE WORLD S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

its end. We have come to the end of our deliberations 
and are about to close one of the most historic meet- 
ings that has ever occurred among the children of men. 
It was my pleasure and privilege, at the meeting of the 
parliament, to welcome the delegates from the differ- 
ent parts of the world to this historic city. We have 
met daily and have formed friendships, and I trust 
they will be as strong as steel, as pure as gold and as 
lasting as eternity. I have never seen so large a body 
of men meet together and discuss questions so vital 
with as little friction as I have seen during this 
parliament. The watchword has been "toleration and 
fraternity," and shows what mayor can be done when 
men assemble in the proper spirit. 

As was said 2,000 years ago. we have met together 
for the truth, each presenting his view of the truth as 
he understands it. Each came with his own fund of 
information and now we separate, having trained infor- 
mation from each other on the subject of God, man- 
kind and the future life. There is one thing that we 
have all agreed upon — that is the source of the true, 
beautiful and the good is spirit, love and light or in- 
finite power, wisdom and goodness. 

Thus the unity of the spirituality of God is one 
thing that we have ail agreed upon. We have differed 
as to how to approach him and how to receive his fa- 
vor and blessing. If the parliament has done nothing 
more it has furnished comparative theology with such 
material that in the future there will be no question 
about the nature and attributes of God. The great 
battle of the future will not be the fatherhood of God 
nor that we need a redeemer, mediator, or a model 
man between God and man. 

There was some apprehension on the part of some 
Christians as to the wisdom of a parliament of all the 



LAST WORDS 355 

religions, but the result of this meeting vindicates the 
wisdom of such a gathering. It appears that the con- 
ception was a divine one rather than human, and the 
execution of the plan has been marvelous in its detail 
and in the harmony of its working and reflects credit 
upon the chairman of the auxiliary, Mr. Bonney, and 
also on Rev. J. H. Barrows, for there is no one who 
has attended these meetings but really believes that 
Christianity has lost nothing in the discussion, but 
stands to-day in a light unknown in the past. 

The ten commandments, the sermon on the mount 
and the golden rule have not been superseded by any 
that has been presented by the various teachers of re- 
ligion and philosophy, but our mountains are just as 
high and our doctrines are just as pure as before our 
meeting and every man and woman has been confirmed 
in the faith once delivered to the saints. 

HAVE NOT ALL THE TRUTH. 

Another good of this convention: it has taught us 
a lesson that while we have truth on our side we have 
not had all the truth ; while we have had theory we 
have not had all the practice, and the strongest crit- 
icism we have received was not as to our doctrines or 
methods, but as to our practice not being in harmony 
with our own teachings and with our own doctrines. 

I believe that it will do good not only to the dom- 
inant race, but to the race that I represent it is a god- 
send, and from this meeting we believe will go forth 
a sentiment that will right a great many of our wongs 
and lighten up the dark places and assist in giving us 
that which we are now denied — the common privileges 
of humanity — for we find that in this congress the ma- 
jority of the people represented are of the darker 



356 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

races, which will teach the American people that color 
is not the standard of excellency or of degradation. 
But I trust that much good will come to all, and not 
only the fatherhood of God be acknowledged but the 
brotherhood of man. 

And now, to my brothers and friends of foreign 
lands, as I bade you welcome, I now bid you good-by, 
and I assure you that your coming and your staying 
has been a benediction to us. And I trust that you 
will feel that your long travel has been fully repaid by 
the hospitality of the American people and what you 
have witnessed of the progress of our Christian civi- 
lization. As you return to your homes be assured that 
loving hearts will follow you with their prayers, that 
you may enjoy the blessings that belong to mankind; 
and should we never meet again (which we never will 
any more), may each of us so live and so conduct 
ourselves that our last end may be one of peace and 
joy. I bid you, in the name of those I represent, a 
loving and affectionate farewell. 

BISHOP KEANE'S LAST WORDS. 

The cheering which greeted Bishop Arnett's ad- 
dress had scarcely lapsed into silence before Presi- 
dent Bonney presented Rt. Rev. Dr. J. J. Keane, rec- 
tor of the Catholic University at Washington. Dr. 
Keane delivered the following address: 

Friends and Brethren: — When in the midst of the 
wise men who were intrusted with the organizing of 
the Columbus celebration, Mr. Bonney rose up and 
said that man meant more than things and proclaimed 
the motto: "Not things, but men," people said: "Why, 
that is only a common-place. Any man could think 
that." 



LAST WORDS 357 

"Yes," said Columbus, "any man could do that," 
when he put the egg upon its end. Mr. Bonney pro- 
claimed that motto. May it make him immortal. 
[Applause.] 

When in the midst of the men who, under the in- 
spiration of that motto, were organizing the congresses 
of the world, Dr. Barrows arose and proclaimed the 
grand idea that all the religions of the world should 
be brought here together, men said : "It is impossL 
ble. " He has done it, and may it make his name im- 
mortal. [Applause]. 

When the invitation to this parliament was sent to 
the old Catholic church and she was asked if she would 
come here, people said : "Will she come?" And the 
old Catholic church said : "Who has as good a right 
to come to a parliament of all the religions of the 
word as the old Catholic Universal church?" 

Then people said: "But if the old Catholic church 
comes here, will she find anybody else here?" And 
the old church said : "Even if she has to stand alone 
on that platform, she will stand on it." 

And the old church has come here, and she is re- 
joiced to meet her fellowmen, her fellow believers, her 
fellow lovers of every shade of humanity and every 
shade of creed. She is rejoiced to meet here the rep- 
resentatives of the old religions of the world, and she 
says to them: 

We leave here. We will go to our homes. We will 
go to the olden ways. Friends, will we not look back 
to this scene of union and weep because separation 
still continues? But will we not pray that there may 
have been planted here a seed that will grow to 
union wide and perfect? Oh, friends, let us pray for 
this. It is better for us to be one. If it were not bet- 
ter for us to be one than to be divided, our Lord and 



35S the world's congress of religions 

God would not have prayed to his father that we 
might all be one as he and the father are one. Oh, 
let us pray for unity, and taking up the glorious strains 
we have listened to to-night, let us, morning, noon 
and night pry out: "Lead, kindly light; lead from all 
gloom; lead from all darkness; lead from all imperfect 
light of human opinion; lead to the fullness of the 
light." 

DR. BARROWS' S ADIEU. 

"In the midst of all these representatives of various 
faiths and churches," said Mr. Bonney, "sits a Pres- 
byterian minister who has performed one of the great- 
est offices ever committed to the hand of man — the 
unification of the world in the things of religion. That 
man now comes to say his closing w 7 ords to this world's 
parliament of religions, and I have the honor to pre- 
sent Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows, chairman of the 
general committee." Dr. Barrows was cheered to 
the echo on rising, the ladies waving their handker- 
chiefs and clapping their hands enthusiastically. 
When the ovation subsided he spoke as follows: 

The closing hour of this parliament is one of congrat- 
ulation, of tender sorrow, of triumphant hopefulness. 
God has been better to us by far than our fears, and 
no one has more occasion for gratitude than 5'our chair- 
man, that he has been upheld and comforted by your 
cordial co-operation, by the prayers of a great host of 
God's noblest men and women and by the conscious- 
ness of divine favor. 

Our hopes have been more than realized. The sen- 
timent which has inspired this parliament has held us 
together. The principles in accord with which this 



LAST WORDS 359 

historic convention has proceeded have been put to 
the test, and even strained at times, but they have not 
been inadequate. Toleration, brotherly kindness, trust 
in each other's sincerity, a candid and earnest seeking 
after the unities of religion, the honest purpose of 
each to set forth his own faith without compromise 
and without unfriendly criticism — these principles, 
thanks to your loyalty and courage, have not been 
found wanting. 

MEN OF ASIA AND EUROPE. 

Men of Asia and Europe, we have been made glad 
by your coming and have been made wiser. I am 
happy that you have enjoyed our hospitalities. While 
floating one evening over the illumined waters of the 
"white city," Mr. Dharmapala said, with that smile 
which has won our hearts, "All the joys of heaven are 
in Chicago," and Dr. Momerie, with a characteristic 
mingling of enthusiasm and skepticism, replied: "I 
wish I were sure that all the joys of Chicago are to 
be in heaven." But surely there will be a multitude 
there whom no man can number, out of every kindred 
and people and tongue, and in that perpetual parlia- 
ment on high the people of God will be satisfied. 

Seventeen days ago there dawned in many hearts a 
new world-consciousness, a sense of universal broth- 
erhood, and to this fact, in part, I attribute it that 
this parliament of all the faiths has been marked by 
less acrimonious discussion — although, we have been 
separated by immense doctrinal distances — than is 
often found in a single meeting of Christians bearing 
the same doctrinal name. 

Now that the parliament is over we almost wonder 
why it was not called earlier in human history. When 



360 THE WORLD'S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS ' 

the general committee discovered that a wondrous re- 
sponse followed their first appeals, that they struck 
a chord of universal sympathy, they [were firm in their 
determination to go forward, in spite of ten thousand 
obstacles, and do what so many feared was impracti- 
cable. 

GREETING TO THE WORLD. 

I thank God for these friendships which we have 
knit with men and women beyond the sea and I thank 
you for your sympathy and over-generous appreciation 
and for the constant help which you have furnished in 
the midst of my multiplied duties. Christian America 
sends her greetings through you to all mankind. We 
cherish a broadened sympathy, a higher respect, a 
truer tenderness to the children of our common father 
in all lands, and, as the story of this parliament is 
read in the cloisters of Japan, by the rivers of South- 
ern Asia, amid the universities of Europe and in the 
isles of all the seas, it is my prayer that non-Christian 
readers may, in some measure, discover what has been 
the source and strength of that faith in divine father- 
hood and human brotherhood which, embodied in an 
Asiatic peasant who was the son of God and made 
divinely potent through him, is clasping the globe 
with bands of heavenly light. 

Most that is in my heart of love and gratitude and 
happy memory must go unsaid. If any honor is due 
for this magnificent achievement, let it be given to 
the spirit of Christ, which is the spirit of love in the 
hearts of those of many lands and faiths who have 
toiled for the high ends of this great meeting. May 
the blessing of him who rules the storm and holds the 
ocean waves in his right hand, follow you, with the 
prayers of all God's people, to your distant homes. 



LAST WORDS 361 

And as Sir Joshua Reynolds closed his lectures on 
"The Art of Painting" with the name of Michael An- 
gelo, so, with a deeper reverence, I desire that the 
last words which I speak to this parliament shall be 
the name of him to whom I owe life and truth and 
hope and all things, who reconciles all contradictions, 
pacifies all antagonisms, and who, from the throne of 
his heavenly kingdom, directs the serene and un- 
wearied omnipotence of redeeming love — Jesus Christ, 
the saviour of the world. 

PRESIDENT BONNEY'S LAST MESSAGE. 

The closing speech of the evening was then deliv- 
ered by Mr. Bonney, as follows: 

Worshipers of God and Lovers of Man: — The clos- 
ing words of this great event must now be spoken. 
With inexpressible joy and gratitude I give them ut- 
terance. The wonderful success of this first actual 
congress of the religions of the world is the realiza- 
tion of a conviction which has held my heart for many 
years. I became acquainted with the great religious 
systems of the world in my youth and have enjoyed 
an intimate association with leaders of many churches 
during my maturer years. I was thus led to believe 
that, if the great religious faiths could be brought 
into relations of friendly intercourse, many points of 
sympathy and union would be found, and the coming 
unity of mankind in the love of God and the service 
of man be greatly facilitated and advanced. Hence 
when the occasion arose it was gladly welcomed, and 
the effort more than willingly made. 

What men deemed impossible, God has finally 
wrought. The religions of the world have actually met 
in a great and imposing assembly; they have conferred 



362 THE WORLD *S CONGRESS OF RELIGIONS 

together on the vital questions of life and immortality 
in a frank and friendly spirit, and now they part in 
peace with many warm expressions of mutual affection 
and respect. 

The laws of the congress forbidding controversy or 
attack, have on the whole, been wonderfully observed. 
The exceptions are so few that they may well be ex- 
punged from the record and from the memory. They 
even served the useful purpose of timely warnings 
against the tendency to indulge in intellectual conflict. 
If an unkind hand threw a fire-brand into the assembly 
let us be thankful that a kinder hand plunged it in the 
waters of forgiveness and quenched its flame. 

If some western warrior, forgetting for the moment 
that this was a friendly conference and not a battle- 
field, uttered his war cry, let us rejoice, our orient 
friends, that a kinder spirit answered : "Father, for- 
give them, for they know not what they say." 

No system of faith or worship has been compro- 
mised by this friendly conference; no apostle of any 
religion has been placed in a false position by any act 
of this congress. The knowledge here acquired will 
be carried by those who have gained it as precious 
treasure to their respective countries, and will there, 
in freedom and according to reason, be considered, 
judged, and applied as they shall deem right. 

The influence which this congress of the religions 
of the world will exert on the peace and the prosper- 
ity of the world is beyond the power of human lan- 
guage to describe. For this influence, borne by those 
who have attended the sessions of the parliament of 
religions to all parts of the world, will affect in some 
important degree all races of men, all forms of religion, 
and even 'all governments and social institutions. 

And now farewell. A thousand congratulations and 



LAST WORDS 363 

thanks for the co-operation and aid of all who have 
contributed to the glorious results which we celebrate 
this night. Henceforth the religions of the world will 
make war, not on each other, but on the giant evils 
that afflict mankind. Henceforth let all throughout 
the world who worship God and love their fellowmen 
join in the anthem of the angels: 

Glory to God in the highest! 

Peace on earth, good will among men! 

CATHOLIC BISHOP'S PRAYER. 

At the close of President Bonney's speech Rabbi 
Hirsch led the great audience in the universal prayer. 
Bishop Keane then said a prayer of benediction. 

The audience led by the chorus sang "America." 
In the meantime the foreign delegates led by Dr. 
Barrows passed into the Hall of Washington, where 
the closing solemnities of prayer and benediction 
were repeated. Thus came to an end the first great 
parliament of the religions of the world. 



FINIS, 



Glimpses 



-192 



Photographic Reproductions in Half= 

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THE niDWAY PLAISANCE 



MOST of the pictures contained in this book are reproductions 6\ 
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LAIRD & LEE, Publishers, 263 Wabash Ave., Chicago. 






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CONGRESS 



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